


The Guilty Party Found Out

by TwilightDeviant



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Human Loki, Loki banished instead of Thor, M/M, Meets a different scientist
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-13
Updated: 2015-04-04
Packaged: 2018-02-13 01:02:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 38,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2131218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwilightDeviant/pseuds/TwilightDeviant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In his mischief, Loki was arrogant. To ruin Thor's coronation was a trick based in stealth. He thought any line leading back to him had been cut. He was wrong.</p><p>The punishment is exile.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One Chatty Meteorite

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Imagine how upset I was that I couldn’t find an AU where Loki gets found out for his treachery and banished to Earth instead of Thor. Gotta fix that.
> 
> I fudged the timeline just a little bit. Because, as we know, Thor 1 begins during Iron Man 2. We’ll say it’s happening the week after instead.

**CALIFORNIA DESERT**  
 **2:43 a.m.**  
  
A splattering of rind and juice hit the dry sand with a momentous force. At the other end of the explosion, traced through trajectory, there was a gloved hand, glowing with its strength and power. The organic viscera of a cactus deconstructed lay utterly defeated.  
  
“All right,” the conqueror ordered, “get me another one.”  
  
“Sir,” came the eloquent, if mechanical, reply, “may I suggest you use actual targets instead of cacti in the desert?”  
  
“Targets don’t go splat when you hit ‘em,” Tony countered, sounding very much like a child at play. “Now find me another.”  
  
“Small traces of organic floral life negative twenty-two degrees to your left,” Jarvis conceded.  
  
Tony adjusted his course appropriately. He liked blowing through cacti, leaving obliterated chunks behind him that were not soon to be missed by anyone. The facts— if he were forced to explain them from an adult’s point of view— could be justified in such a way: they were roughly the size of people, they were scattered, and they blew everywhere when you hit them. He could add in the appealing detail that an open desert provided more than adequate space for flying practice, but the on point argument of cactus blasting was probably sufficient. They made great targets.  
  
He annihilated his newest pursuit in under a second.  
  
“Are you satisfied with the Mark VI’s capabilities yet, sir?” Jarvis inquired.  
  
Above being what some might deem a wantonly destructive child, Tony was most definitely a scientist, and having one more justification for his recreation was satisfying. “Almost,” he reported, “find me a few more.”  
  
“Thirty-eight degrees to your right.”  
  
Tony flew towards it, his thrusters blowing sand and making an audible sound like a miniaturized rocket. But his own manmade flares paled in a great contrast to the light that erupted so suddenly from the sky, like a white hot volcano held upside down. From it a beam descended like focused sunlight, angled and tearing through to the ground.  
  
The power in his suit delayed. The screen in his helmet flickered and went out. He dropped to the sand like an inelegant stone, rolling until momentum quit him. For a moment, there was nothing, only darkness. Then the metal cage surrounding him quickly booted back up.  
  
“Jarvis?” he asked hesitantly, riddled with an uncertain curiosity as to what could have knocked out his technology.  
  
“I don’t know, sir.”  
  
“No, really,” he exclaimed, sitting up and looking around, “what the hell?”  
  
“I still don’t know, sir.” Jarvis took pause, and Tony could see his display lighting up with various readings. “I’m picking up traces of life at the center of the site.”  
  
“Are we thinking aliens here?” Tony joked, filling the words with a chuckle and sarcasm.  
  
“I would advise investigating only with extreme caution,” Jarvis warned him.  
  
Not really imagining a time, a place, or a universe where he didn’t immediately check out what had happened, Tony sped at once towards the end of the rainbow.  
  
The closer he got, the more sand began to obstruct his advance. Clouds of it swirled around him, imbedding themselves in the joints of his suit.  
  
“Jarvis?” he prompted, compelled to a request for directions.  
  
“Life form is four feet in front of—”  
  
Tony hit something.  
  
“Was that…?” he began to ask, but an ill sense of realization told him that he need not even finish the question.  
  
“I believe so, sir.”  
  
“Well thanks for the speedy warning,” he said, berating his disembodied assistant.  
  
He landed. The suit sank into the ground a few inches before leveling out.  
  
“The sand was interfering with my guidance,” Jarvis defended. “It seems to be dissipating now.”  
  
Tony looked around himself. The maelstrom of grit circled with a dying energy, slowly losing its supernatural vitality. He saw at once a dark form upon the ground, several feet from where it had first landed and been struck.  
  
“Looks human,” he observed.  
  
“Yes, sir,” Jarvis agreed. “Readings concur.”  
  
Tony groaned, not liking where he could see the course of events going. “What’s our insurance like?”  
  
“The Iron Man suit is not a vehicle,” Jarvis informed. “Strictly speaking, it has no insurance.”  
  
“Maybe best to keep the legal team on standby,” he remarked.  
  
Slowly, instilled with an atypical caution, Tony approached the figure on the ground. The person was curled over on their side and covered in a thin layer of settled sand. Tony raised the faceplate of his armor and knelt down beside them, giving a little shake on the shoulder.  
  
“Hey,” he called, “you okay?”  
  
The person groaned as one stubbornly fighting consciousness, avoiding reality or responsibility. They woke, though reluctantly, and rolled onto their back. It was a man, evident even in the dim light of the moon and the soft glow of his arc reactor. He looked young, perhaps in his early thirties, with dark hair and skin so pale it seemed to absorb the light around him. He glanced at Tony and became at once enraged, his angled features becoming an even harsher thing to observe.  
  
“How _dare_ you attack me!” he shouted, and he was intimidating even in his fragile looking state.  
  
“Sorry,” Tony quickly replied. “That was a total and complete accident. But, and to be fair, you shouldn’t have been walking around in the middle of the desert at night.”  
  
The man stood, slowly and on wavering feet. He steadied himself and looked up to the sky.  
  
“Father!” he cried, a heavy, bellowing call. “Have mercy! I was only…”  
  
“Jarvis,” Tony asked, not listening to the psychotic sky ravings going on before him, “is there any chance this guy’s escaped from the funny farm?”  
  
“His profile isn’t showing on any news bulletins.”  
  
“Right,” Tony sighed, “let’s get him to a hospital just in case.” He walked forward and grabbed the man’s arm, interrupting his pleading speech. “Listen, I think we should—”  
  
“Unhand me!” he exclaimed, knocking the metal glove away with a surprising force. “You should show a son of Odin more respect.”  
  
“Odin?” Tony queried, disliking that the more the other talked, the more it raised questions and furthered doubts of mental stability.  
  
The man walked unfettered, his feet barely sinking into the sand beneath him. He studied the sky above, the ground below, and the horizon far away. “Midgard,” he declared. There followed a brief chortle, but it was an angry, embittered thing. “What a boring punishment.”  
  
“Jarvis?” Tony asked, feeling himself with a severe lack of viable options.  
  
“If you’re looking for advice from a legal standpoint,” Jarvis answered, “abducting him from here might add to a list of grievances later.”  
  
“We can’t leave the guy here,” Tony said, watching as he walked around in a circle, gazing intently in each direction. “He’s been drinking the cactus juice.”  
  
“Also you ran over him,” Jarvis reminded.  
  
“Also I ran over him.”  
  
“You, metal human,” the man called, seeming to finally remember his presence, “you will take me to a city.”  
  
“Would it be too much for you to throw in a ‘please’?” Tony quipped. But he couldn’t be too upset. Getting the crazy guy to go with him was what he wanted.  
  
“Do not talk back to me,” he reprimanded, offended that Tony even thought he could. He advanced with charging steps, angry and intent. “I am a son of Odin. I am more powerful and more deadly than—”  
  
He spasmed slightly, little more than a shake, and went down like a sack of bricks.  
  
“Brilliant work, sir.”  
  
“He was going to attack me,” Tony exclaimed.  
  
“You are in a suit of titanium alloy several layers thick,” Jarvis notified him.  
  
“Well,” he argued, “maybe he’s just crazy and I don’t like that.”  
  
He leaned down to pick the man up, still and unconscious once more.  
  
“I’ll set course for the nearest hospital,” Jarvis spoke.  
  
Tony’s suit lifted into the air, powered by no more than the thrusters in his boots and on his back. He gently situated the man until he was hanging over his shoulder, giving himself at least one hand to guide with.  
  
“If anyone asks,” he suggested, “I don’t suppose you could tell them he passed out all on his own?”  
  
“My apologies,” Jarvis stated, “but the execution of you electrocuting him is now in my memory banks.”  
  
“‘Shocking him’,” Tony corrected. “I shocked him. Don’t say I electrocuted him. That sounds even worse.”  
  
“It is what you did though, sir.”  
  
“Hey, that was for his own good and you know it.”  
  
Without the use of both gloves, the flight was dodgy and it was slow. The man slung over his shoulder tried to wake at least once, and Tony, panicking, hit him with a current of electricity again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would really like to continue with this. I should probably rewatch Thor first though, just to see how certain things would play out.


	2. To Know Judgment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. I got a lot of kudos and positive feedback from that last brief chapter, for which I am very grateful. Here’s hoping I don’t let any of you down.

For Loki to say that his plan had worked would have been an understatement that ignored pressing and dangerous facts. The truth was his plan worked too well. But then, the hubris of his brother was hardly a constant or controllable factor.  
  
He watched Odin pull the sword of Heimdall from its pedestal, distantly heard shouted orders to take Thor’s friends to the healing room. Little seemed to matter in the moment. Loki was of a persuasion to his own crisis. He looked once more to the hand at his side, pale colored flesh that betrayed no deeper meaning. If not for the missing armor that had protected it, he would have proclaimed the entire happening a deception.  
  
“There won’t be a kingdom to protect if you’re afraid to act,” Thor shouted, proud in his ire and forgetting his place before the king. “The Jotuns must learn to fear me, just as they once feared you.”  
  
Loki drifted from their argument. He watched their wounded comrades retreat and held his breath, compelled to follow. For had he not himself been burned by a Frost Giant’s hand? Should he not receive his own care for it?  
  
“While you wait and be patient,” Thor sneered, “the Nine Realms laugh at us.”  
  
“Do not accuse me of idling my time,” Odin shouted his reply, “of letting the kingdom fall around me and not having lifted a finger to oppose it. You,” he accused, “seek war. In vain I thought justice would appease you, was what you claimed to have wanted. And while you have gallivanted far and disobeyed my express command, I have sought answers. A gateway I found, closed now but open before and with the magic of Asgard.”  
  
There was a painful closing in Loki’s throat, as if he was choking on nothingness or a lack of air. His mouth turned dry in his terror.  
  
Thor would not hear such nonsense. “You give credence to the lies of Laufey,” he remarked bitterly.  
  
“I speak the truth!” Odin bellowed. The room fell silent, oppressed by his groping anger. Loki took a step back from the Allfather, whose assertions only cultivated his worry. “Opened by the magic of a strong sorcerer, and bearing traces that I recognize with,” he paused before continuing, as though reluctant, “regrettable familiarity.”  
  
“Who would dare?” Thor demanded, and he was livid at such a thought of betrayal, his anger misplaced in a head that had only just returned from disobedience.  
  
Odin dropped his singular gaze upon Loki with heavy judgment.  
  
“Father,” he cried, stunned, “be logical.” He placed a hand upon his breast, a compelling signal of insult and innocence. “What have I to gain from such an act?”  
  
“What indeed?” Odin questioned, skeptical and distrusting.  
  
“I will not believe it,” Thor refuted, stepping forward. “Even in all his mischief, Loki would never—”  
  
“And yet he did!” Odin shouted, his voice a booming call that crushed opposition and warned of penalty. He looked to Loki with an expression that begged and demanded for his candor. “Admit now to your traitorous act and perhaps the punishment shall be lessened.”  
  
Loki solemnly shook his head, and he was in that moment a fine mockery of sincerity. Even he would have believed himself, were he a fool. “It wasn’t me,” he declared. “I plead for your trust. Believe me, Father.”  
  
“You vow it was not you?” Odin stressed.  
  
“Yes,” Loki confirmed. “Yes, I swear it.”  
  
Odin nodded his head once, gravely serious. “Then I am left with no other choice.” Turning towards the open gate of the Bifrost, he gave a single call: “Guards!” Two marched in quickly, and upon them Odin gave an order. “Given the nature of the crime and the,” he halted, “ _unique_ impression that it left…” With a wave of his hand, he told the guards to, “Arrest the queen for treason.”  
  
“What!” Loki demanded, and he was in a paralyzing shock from the distress of the situation before him.  
  
“Father,” Thor contested, “you must be joking.”  
  
“Do you see merriment in my face, Thor?” Odin challenged, and there was within him not even a glimmer of the sentiment. “Loki says it was not him,” he stated, “and there are only two spell casters in all the realms that could have left such a mark behind.”  
  
“She is your wife!” Thor yelled at him.  
  
“Then all the more grievous is the fact that I cannot trust her,” he lamented. Odin turned toward the guards, hastening them from their lingering with a simple command to, “Go.”  
  
Loki felt his tongue as nimble lead, eager in its want to speak, but still and heavy in its action. To say nothing was to doom the queen, Frigga, his mother. To speak out was to incriminate himself and accept punishment for his misdeeds. An ingrained arrogance told him that no harm would come to either of them, but to test Odin with conjecture was to tarnish a pure woman’s reputation.  
  
“Stop!”  
  
The guards obeyed his command, coming to a synchronized halt. The gaze of every person in the rounded room was upon him, waiting.  
  
“It was me,” he admitted. “Father, it was me.” He approached the dais upon which the king stood and knelt before him, ready to accept whatever meager, short-lived reprimand may come his way. “Arrest me, but leave Mother out of it.”  
  
“Loki,” Odin uttered quietly. There was a tenderness in his spoken name that soon passed, giving way to an angered betrayal, fierce in its confirmation. “Your punishment shall not be so merciful.”  
  
“What?” Loki questioned. His mind was in a daze as he looked up at the man before him. And then he saw Odin’s decree against the queen as the bluff that it was. Never would she have been imprisoned, for imprisonment would not be the sentence for such an act. He, the god of lies, had been tricked into confession.  
  
“You betrayed the whole of Asgard,” Odin stated crossly. “A traitor in our house makes us weaker for it.”  
  
“Father, you are mistaken,” Thor said in his favor. “Loki only defends the queen.”  
  
“My only mistake,” Odin exclaimed, “was in thinking that I could trust one foolish child alone long enough that I could investigate the other’s treachery.”  
  
“Be reasonable,” Thor contested, so assured was he in Loki’s innocence.  
  
“Do not preach reason to me,” Odin shouted, dismissing his objection, “not you.” He looked down upon them, Thor high in his self-importance, Loki upon his knees in a forced submission. “Two sons I have before me. One is a wrathful fool, the other a liar and a traitor. The Odinsleep will soon be upon me. If I am forced to put my faith in one to rule,” he said, words miserable and at an end with rationality, “I must, regrettably, choose the honest fool.”  
  
Loki stood at once, looking as one who had been physically struck. “After what Thor has done?” he spat. “He has hastened us to war!”  
  
“And who planted the idea in his head?” Odin demanded.  
  
“I don’t know what you mean,” Loki replied, but his veil of lies was falling around him like individual threads of a spider’s web. In his desperate grasping for further untruths to weave, he clutched naught but air, and the failure showed through upon his face, making him an unbelievable sight.  
  
“Thor is brazen,” Odin commented, “but not usually so disloyal. Who, I wonder, would convince him to this battle.”  
  
“My actions were my own,” Thor protested angrily, “and I regret them not.”  
  
“Then you are blind for not seeing the strings your brother holds above your head!” Odin yelled at him.  
  
Thor stepped back, stricken from his reprimand. Odin paid him no further mind.  
  
“Loki Odinson,” he addressed, and there was the coolness of a levelheaded monarch hiding as a mask, concealing the anger that laid beneath. “You have sought the ruination of Asgard and you have been rewarded for your efforts.”  
  
“No, Father,” Loki argued, and he was a miserable and desperate figure. “It isn’t like that. I was only—”  
  
“Playing?” Odin questioned. “Having fun? Gambling with the lives of thousands? I cannot abide betrayers in this unstable house whose walls already threaten to crumble around us. Through your mischief and your treachery, through your exploitation of your brother’s arrogance, you’ve opened these peaceful realms and innocent lives to the horror and desolation of war!” He raised his golden staff with a shaking hand and drove it into the pedestal, acting in the stead of Heimdall’s sword. The room quaked around them as a bright and cold lightning struck its spherical walls. “You are unworthy of these realms!” he cried, descending the gilded steps and marching upon him. “You’re unworthy of your title!” He tore from Loki his dark green cape, and he was unimpeded from the act, so hindered was the victim by his shock. “You are unworthy,” Odin boomed, snarling in his face every ounce of fury he had hidden, “of the loved ones you have betrayed.”  
  
Thor looked on with a penitent lack of interference. To his best he had defended his brother against each slanderous claim, but the Allfather had not heard him. He stood as silent and upset as Loki, watching an unstoppable sentence.  
  
Odin walked away, stepping back upon the base of the stairs before he turned and decreed, “I now take from you your powers!” A cold, unnatural feeling settled as nausea in the pit of Loki’s stomach. “In the name of my father and his father before, I, Odin Allfather, cast you out!”  
  
He extended his mighty hand before him, and Loki received only that motion as a warning before he was struck by the force of it, knocking him back, burning him with a force that gave pain but took so much more. Loki felt himself lighter, with a powerful weight removed, but also heavier with a new, unfamiliar one taking its place. Before he could recover from the agonizing sensation, he was hit again, more forcefully, knocking him back, back and into the Bifrost. He felt the last vestments of his armor leave him, staying behind, and past that, he knew no more.  
  
Loki was gone from Asgard.  
  
He did not hear Thor’s shouts, did not hear when he spoke against Odin, saying, “Father, this is madness!”  
  
Loki did not see as Odin approached the guards and spoke to them. “Escort our warrior prince to a cell,” he ordered. “I have much to fix before I must surrender to the Odinsleep, and he has much to think on in isolation before I may feel at ease with him in command.”  
  
His edict was carried out against the cries and the protestations of the crowned prince. And Loki sped to Earth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo. Heavy stuff. Now back to Earth for more fun.
> 
> I'm doing something unprecedented here and submitting these chapters almost directly after I've finished writing them. I'm sure I'll regret it for the thousands of mistakes I find later.


	3. I Liked You Better When You Were Unconscious

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay. I had to actually pause and think about where I plan on going with this. Got a nice outline now.
> 
> So here’s where things change gears a bit. Up until now, I’ve been fairly loyal to the movie with only certain parts and characters swapped out. But, because different people in different situations act… differently, that changes now. Into a fairly original plot. I’m pretty sure that’s a good thing?

The top floor of the hospital parking deck presented a wide, accommodating target upon which to land. But if stealth were an objective, he barely mastered it using only his right glove for directional assistance.  
  
“Sir,” Jarvis stated, “may I suggest the slightly less conspicuous entrance of going in without your armor on?”  
  
Tony looked at himself and nodded. “Yeah,” he agreed, “that’s probably for the best.”  
  
He crouched down and leaned the unconscious crazy man up against the half-wall of the parking deck. There was an elevator nearby that served as adequate cover when he ducked behind it and shed his suit.  
  
“Goes without saying,” he told Jarvis, “but if anybody tries to move or even touch you—”  
  
“I will act in a harmless but defensive manner,” Jarvis interrupted him to say, speaking his loyally programmed assurances.  
  
“Good boy.” Tony patted the metal helmet of his suit and returned to the slouching figure, closer to the ground than he had left him and slipping further down every second.  
  
There was more to be said about the man’s appearance in the orange glow of the surrounding lights, blinking and wrapped by swarming insects as they were. His face had a softer look to it when there was more light than shadows to etch out the details. The pants he wore were fine enough, but his dark green tunic with its high collar made it look as though he was the last remaining participant of a renaissance faire that had up and left without him. The most noticeable attribute to be observed, however, was the crawling grin upon his face, a mischievous, mirthful pull that followed him through sleep and outside of it. The expression looked natural and well at home, and that alone was slightly unnerving.  
  
“I bet you aren’t light, are you?” Tony asked him, for the man— though lean— seemed to have a good few inches on him. He bent down and picked up a slack arm, throwing it over his shoulder. With a groan, he lifted up and confirmed, “I was right.”  
  
Tony dragged him into the elevator, and it was dragging in its most literal sense. He wouldn’t be surprised if the man acquired a few scrapes on his shins, even through his leather pants.  
  
The somber music that played inside the elevator did a decent job of trying to take him out of the moment. But then the man began falling away from the wall he had been propped against and Tony had to try and fix him back.  
  
The doors opened on the floor leading to the hospital entrance, and when Tony poked his head out, he saw two doctors leaning against the rail and smoking through their recess. “Excuse me,” he called, walking towards them to catch their attention. “If I could just—” The elevator door began to close and he stuck his foot in it. “—A moment of your time. I’ve got a guy here who might be in need of medical attention.”  
  
They promptly put out their cigarettes and rushed into the elevator. Tony watched them as they checked vitals and eye reaction and everything else of an expected nature.  
  
“What happened?” one asked.  
  
“He, uh…” What a loaded question. “I found him in the desert.” It wasn’t untrue.  
  
“I’ll get a chair,” the other doctor insisted, and he ran off, leaving the unconscious desert wanderer in the care of the first.  
  
“Did he say anything to you?” the man asked, looking at Tony.  
  
“He may have—” The elevator door tried to close again, and Tony stuck a hand out to stop it. “He may have said some things. I don’t think any of it’s really relevant unless one of you is a psychiatrist.”  
  
The doctor glanced at him oddly, but his friend returned then with a wheelchair, a very speedy individual. They lifted him into the chair, such capable people, and began heading towards the entrance.  
  
“Let’s get him inside,” one stated.  
  
“Go team,” Tony passively exclaimed, punching the air with a half-hearted shake of his fist. The two of them seemed to have the matter more than taken care of. Tony took a step back into the elevator, hoping to leave without being noticed.  
  
“Aren’t you coming?” asked one of the doctors. He held out a hand and gestured for Tony to follow them. “You might be able to help us figure out what happened.”  
  
“Yeah,” Tony sighed. “Why wouldn’t I come?”  
  
The men rushed with an enthusiasm that seemed stolen from overly dramatic hospital dramas. Tony lingered behind, trailing much more slowly.  
  
In his leisurely stroll, he took a fortuitous notice that one of them had left a hooded jacket hanging over the rail. He grabbed it and slid it on over his head, pulling the hood tightly around his face. Any wall between recognition and anonymity in such a situation was one he would gladly put up.  
  
He lazily followed signs, turning corner after corner, until he ended up in the E.R.. There were a couple handfuls of people, mostly sick and coughing. Tony approached the desk.  
  
“Yeah, hey, I—”  
  
“Fill this out,” the nurse behind the counter instructed. She didn’t look up from her computer screen, but she pushed a clipboard towards him as though the practiced motion of it no longer required her attention.  
  
“Not a patient,” Tony responded simply, and he pulled back away from the clipboard, wanting nothing to do with it. “Look, here’s the thing. I brought this guy in just now, and…” He shrugged. “The doctors thought I could help, but I really don’t know much at all.”  
  
“Oh, yes,” she said in reply, and it was most annoying that she still would not look at him, so engrossed by her computer screen she was. Hopefully it was official work. Tony would have been really frustrated if she was simply updating some online status page. “They said someone was coming. Just tell me anything he might have said so I can put it in the report.” She moved the mouse around and began a quick series of clicks mixed with typing. Then she gave him a quick glance, prompting him to speak.  
  
“You don’t want to know the things he said,” Tony retorted.  
  
“Did you get a name?” she asked. Her hands hovered over the keyboard, waiting for a subject to type.  
  
“Uh, no,” he said. “No name. But he did say his father was called, uh… Odin?” He was fairly certain that was the name he had heard, and if it wasn’t, he had no greater guess. “So maybe that’ll help if there’s a missing persons or, you know, a warrant.”  
  
It was, perhaps, too late at night for such nonsense. She looked up at him with an irritated face, but it quickly dissolved. In its place, recognition beamed as a bright light illuminating a dark room.  
  
“Oh, my gosh,” she gasped.  
  
Her roving eye was almost enough to make Tony feel intimidated and exposed. “Please don’t freak out,” he pleaded.  
  
“You’re Tony Stark!” the nurse exclaimed, and the volume of the statement drew the attention of a few, though they seemed less inclined towards the excitement of it.  
  
“I said please,” he groaned.  
  
“Tammy!” she called.  
  
“No, don’t get Tammy,” Tony begged. She left, disappearing around the corner and he leaned over the counter, yelling after her. “Don’t get Tammy. No, don’t— Tammy,” he sighed, “hi.”  
  
“Oh, my god,” the new girl screeched.  
  
“Yeah, hey,” he greeted. Before anything else could be yelled out or shrieked at a piercing level, Tony held a calming finger to his lips, signaling for quiet. “Look, I found this guy, all right?” They nodded, but were otherwise still and silent. “But I don’t want this turning into some three-ring press circus. So if we could all just keep our heads down and act cool, I would be really, really grateful.”  
  
“Yeah,” the first nurse agreed, before switching to a more official and mature sounding, “yes! We can be discreet.”  
  
“Thanks,” Tony said, “I owe you.” He clapped his hands together. “Now am I free to go or…?”  
  
His hanging question seemed to deflate their enthusiasm somewhat. “Don’t you want to wait and see if he’s okay?” the second girl, Tammy, asked.  
  
There was a definite expectation of heroics. As much as Tony hated to admit it, staying and making sure the guy was okay did seem like the responsible thing to do. He hated being responsible.  
  
“Yeah,” he conceded. “That would be the compassionate thing, wouldn’t it?”  
  
He left them to go and sit in one of the hard chairs, ready to make himself comfortable for what would surely be a long wait. Just as he found a decent position, the person next to him began a wet, contagious sounding cough.  
  
Tony groaned and waited for just a second before saying, “Sorry to bother you. Won’t happen again. But do you think you could maybe point that in another direction?”  
  
The person gave him a pale and tired glare.  
  
“Or not.”  
  
He got up and took a seat across the room in an area that was mostly deserted.  
  
Given the late hour and the lack of stimulation, Tony almost fell asleep at one point or another, only to rouse himself. He had just begun falling prey to slumber’s tempting call once more when one of the nurses approached him.  
  
“Mister Stark?”  
  
“Shh,” he whispered from below the awning of his hood. “Let’s keep names on the down low if we can, all right?”  
  
“Yes, sir,” she agreed. “It’s just… he’s awake now. He’s asked to see you.”  
  
“Yeah,” Tony sighed. “Of course he did.”  
  
The nurse led, and he followed, if slower and reluctantly. What the guy could possibly want to see him about was a mystery. Unless, of course, he was the kind of court room frequenting, lawsuit filing opportunist who kept their lawyer on speed dial above even their mother.  
  
When they entered the room, the nurse kept her eyes on Tony, practically gushing from the still surreal feeling of being in his presence. The man in the bed she seemed to stay clear of, for she would not approach and only checked the machines beside him from a distance.  
  
If being hit, if being shocked, if being caught inside a small sandstorm had ill effect upon the lounging man, it did not show in his features. They were calmed and calculating and altogether unsettling.  
  
“Leave us, won’t you?” he requested. It was a timid voice, though smooth in its execution. Tony knew better. In the desert, he had heard anger and strength behind its call.  
  
The nurse seemed to panic slightly from being addressed, but she nodded and stepped outside. Tony watched her go, closing the door behind her.  
  
“I think she’s frightened of me.” The observation sounded almost proud.  
  
“Why would that be?” Tony asked.  
  
“I might have choked her a little when I woke up,” he answered.  
  
“You choked her!” Tony exclaimed. He felt the need to take his own step back.  
  
“Only a little,” the man said, and still he grinned because of it. “I was disoriented. But I let her go and, as you can see, she’s fine.”  
  
Tony looked at him, thoroughly sizing the man up. Even amid the white sheets and confined within a hospital gown, there was an air about him, a spark in the room that waned with impotence but conveyed a purpose and a threat all the same. “What do you want?” he asked him, wary of the summons.  
  
“Get me out of here,” came the simple response.  
  
“No,” Tony said with a shake of his head, “I really think this is the sort of place you belong.”  
  
“I find it most irritating here. It smells of artificial cleanliness.” He scrunched his long, thin nose at it. “Also the staff keep asking for ensurance, and I’ve no guarantee to give them.”  
  
“Yeah,” Tony quipped, “I think they mean ‘insurance’, with an ‘I’. And sorry, we don’t have free healthcare like you guys do.”  
  
“Pardon?”  
  
“The accent,” he pointed out, “you’re from England, right? Big Ben, cheerio, all that.”  
  
“I spent some time there long ago, but— no!” He shook his head angrily. “You distract me. I wish to leave this facility, and you are taking me.”  
  
“Really don’t see why I should,” Tony told him. “I stayed to make sure you were all right, but now I really got other places I have to be.”  
  
He turned to leave but was called back before even a single step had been taken.  
  
“I have, as they tell me, two broken ribs from where I was struck, from where you hit me.” When Tony turned back, the man was looking down, his eye trained upon his chest. The touch of two fingers trailed along himself, no doubt tracing the line of injury. “Are you familiar with this sort of lingering pain?”  
  
“Yes.” And who hadn’t broken something or bruised something or cut something, enduring the ache of it for weeks?  
  
“Well, I’m not,” the man said, and for a moment he sounded as a petulant child. “This is all very new to me, and I don’t like it. Why am I not healed by now?”  
  
Tony clicked his tongue and shrugged. “Modern medicine is good, but it’s not that good. Give it time.” He patted the other’s leg through the thin layers of hospital blankets and attempted to leave once more.  
  
“Oh, I wasn’t finished.” And there was the predictable line calling him back.  
  
“I know appearances may fool you,” Tony stated, “but I’m actually a very busy man.”  
  
“Then help yourself from making it worse.” He tilted his head slightly down, and the cold light of the bulbs around him seemed to cast his eyes into a malicious shadow. “I could make life very difficult for you.”  
  
“What are you talking about?” Tony asked, though dread told him the direction that the conversation would soon take.  
  
“I am in pain because of you,” the man expressed, and suddenly he was very much the victim. “I have been dealt a powerful blow. I know not your laws here, but unless you are truly disordered heathens, I feel I am entitled to compensation.” And there it was, as expected. “You may give it to me willingly, or I will extract it through threat of tarnishing your public image.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Tony scoffed, “are you blackmailing me now?”  
  
“Show me slighted courtesy and I will respond in kind. You offer a poor example of your species that I must squeeze the hospitality from you.”  
  
“Yeah, but,” Tony chuckled, “you’re crazy. Who’s gonna believe you?”  
  
“Oh,” the man professed, looking so very cool and as though he was calculating a great many threats and plans upon their deepest levels, “I assure you, I can act most sane when I wish it. Give me any test you can contrive.”  
  
“Who’s the president?”  
  
There was a quick second of pause and contemplation before the surrendering utterance of, “Damn.”  
  
“Don’t beat yourself up,” Tony comforted. It wasn’t exactly a hard question, which made it all the nicer for proving his point.  
  
“No,” the man said, slowly lying back into his bed, “you already did that for me.” He closed his eyes tightly. “And it hurts so bad.” The room filled with the wounded sound of his sudden, shuddering gasps.  
  
“What is this?” Tony questioned, watching him skeptically. “What are you doing?”  
  
“I know…” He stopped, racked with an onset of torment. “I know he didn’t intend to injure me,” he spoke to the speckled ceiling tiles. “And for a brief moment he did the right thing. He brought me to a place of healing. But then I was left there, callously thrown aside with his own diagnosis of insanity, for surely that must be the only reason that I let myself be run over by him.”  
  
“Don’t say run over!” Tony argued with a moan. “People will think I hit you with a car.”  
  
“It hurts so bad,” he wheezed.  
  
“Are you crying now? You can cry on cue?” Had he hit an actor?  
  
The man sobered instantly and sat back up, slowly and only to a slightly higher vantage. Had he been on a stage, there would have been applause. “Yes, and I’m quite good at it. I’ve won the sympathies of many in the past.”  
  
“You are diabolical,” Tony observed. It shouldn’t have sounded like a compliment, but that seemed to be the way it was taken.  
  
“And you have standing,” he replied knowingly, “wealth.”  
  
“You know who I am?” Never from that day forward would Tony speak on the merit of a hooded jacket as a disguise. Although, the man before him had seen the Iron Man suit. For him to not know would have been a surprise.  
  
“I’ve no idea who you are.” And there was the surprise. “But the healer woman, she reveres you. And the armor that you wore before, it was intricate, strong, ornate even by my standards. You have status in this world. I would hate to see it suffer.”  
  
Well, it wouldn’t be the hardest hit his reputation had ever taken. It wouldn’t exactly be far from the rock bottom of it either. But, as Pepper told him with increasing frequency, being a hero came with a whole new batch of P.R. responsibilities. He hated being a hero.  
  
“What is it you want?”  
  
“I’ve already told you,” the man repeated. “I want out of here.”  
  
“Fine, I’ll get you a cushy hotel room.” A couple weeks in luxury should be enough time for him to recover.  
  
“No,” he objected, and he looked insulted by the offer. “You will not abandon me out of your own convenience. Loath as I am to admit it, I have not been here for many years. I will need help if I am to navigate your society until my return home.”  
  
“‘Return home’?” Tony questioned slowly. The words were innocent enough. Everybody had a home. But something about their utterance sounded off, as though they were foreign or applied to such a place that would be.  
  
“Yes,” the other answered. “I could walk out of here now without a single design in mind, but to what end?”  
  
As he spoke, there were fireworks in his eyes. They were powered by thoughts as dangerous as gunpowder, exploding with ideas and denying their inherent nature to spark once and wither. Instead, one seemed to light another, causing a chain reaction of his design that struck out and wove a network in which each deliberation was alive and as responsive as nerve endings. One plan or a thousand were hard at work, and there was the observable sensation that Tony was witnessing a kindred mind that never ceased. He wondered if people ever perceived that look of unending clockwork which turned his own brain, or if they failed to recognize it for what it was.  
  
“Where is home?” he asked.  
  
“Why?”  
  
Tony shrugged. “I just wanna know which it is exactly. What? Are you from the past, a foreigner, alien, or— where I’m placing my bet— just crazy?”  
  
The man thought it through, and still that was an engaging process to watch. The question was a simple one, and his hesitance spoke much on his eventual answer. “By your standards, I could perhaps be considered all four.”  
  
“Awesome,” Tony drawled sarcastically, not at all appeased by the reply. His frustration, though, was an unclear thing, created from a lack of differentiation between either his confirmation of insanity realized or because the answer was vague when he had been hoping it wouldn’t be. “I don’t know what you want from me.”  
  
“I will stay with you for now,” he answered. It was a statement that ridiculed Tony’s intelligence for not having realized as well as ordered him to comply without room for debate.  
  
“No.” He never really had been one for laying down and doing as told.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Yeah,” he informed, “I don’t do the clichéd back and forth monosyllabic argument thing. No.”  
  
“Clearly you do,” the man countered. “Yes.”  
  
Tony groaned a sustained whining noise. He paced the small room in a broken circle, balancing heavily on the heels of his feet with his head thrown back and his shoulders slumped. The hospital bed shook when he grasped its footboard roughly. “Why?”  
  
“I’ve nowhere else to go.” And didn’t that just sound like the most pitiful answer, with the put-upon glassy eyes and quivering lip to match?  
  
“Well, boo-freakin’-hoo.” He was on to the guy’s game. Manipulation was his strong suit, but Tony’s happened to be not doing what people waited on and expected from him, from normal people. After his knowledge of mechanics, it was his greatest asset. “But I’m not about to take in every crazed hobo I meet just because.”  
  
“And how many of them have you hit and knocked unconscious?” Tony gave him a withering look, to which the man innocently replied, “Oh, that’s an honest question. I’m attempting to measure your character. For all I know, _you’re_ the dangerous one.”  
  
“You’re my first. And at least I don’t admit to being crazy.”  
  
“No, the truly insane ones never do.” The guy had a response to everything. It was as though in addition to being a topnotch actor, he did a bit of legal work as a more than competent lawyer on the side. “If anything, my forthcoming nature with what you might label as madness should put you at ease.”  
  
“Oh, yeah,” Tony stated, “I love honest psychopaths. They’re my favorite.”  
  
“I don’t know why you’re fighting it,” he sighed. His cool green eyes studied Tony as though he were quite strange and overall hard to figure out. “I’m not really giving you a choice in this. I am leaving this place, you are taking me, and it is your home that I will stay in.” The tone as he laid out his intent was one that consumed its own patience, and the supply was running thin.  
  
If their debate were a card game, Tony would have been bluffing against a royal flush. In his threat to publicize facts, the man before him, grinning with a success already achieved, held all the right cards. Had he shown up a week or two ago, Tony might have risked it. But even having so recently saved the world— again— there were still waves of fallout from the Vanko incident that attacked him. One more affront could go unnoticed on a heaping pile, or it could be the straw that broke the camel’s back. And while Tony liked risks, reckless ones such as that were so last week.  
  
“All right.”

Or did he just make the most stupid one of all?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my gosh, writing Loki is so hard! Well, this Loki anyway. Normal Avengers+ Loki is fine. There’s intimidation and a hint of insanity. But this Loki (the one that existed before learning his heritage and taking it out on Thor) is hard. I can’t make him too cruel, but he isn’t exactly a doe eyed innocent either.
> 
> Also, I feel like Loki is smarter, much more calculating and prepared, and as such wouldn’t storm out of a hospital without a plan. And then there’s Thor who tried to fight his way out. lol. No, Loki would rather have lodgings while he works through his next plan.


	4. Make Yourself at Home or Don't Whatever

It took a fair amount of convincing before Tony was allowed out of the hospital room with the promise that, no, he wasn’t leaving. He had to make a phone call, and he would be right back. Honestly, the thought of running far, far away hadn’t even occurred to him, but it began to sound tempting.  
  
The phone rang in his ear, and still the thought enticed him. Surely he could find some way around being blackmailed. But then the other line was picked up, and that seemed to be the end of that.  
  
An unintelligible sound roared its mangled call in his ear, to which he replied, “Hey, Hap.”  
  
There was a brief pause and several botched attempts at speech before the man was able to stammer out, “Do you have any idea what time it is?”  
  
Tony looked at his watch because, no, the thought that people could be asleep hadn’t even occurred to him. “4:50,” he answered, though Happy probably knew that and it was more a scolding remark than an actual question. “How’s my favorite bodyguard?”  
  
“Don’t do that,” Happy told him.  
  
“Don’t do what?”  
  
“The thing,” he answered, “the condescending thing like anybody could actually be your bodyguard.”  
  
Tony hummed in agreement, figuring that was mostly true ever since Iron Man had become a thing. “Well, I do, at the very least, need a ride.”  
  
That stirred Happy into reluctant action. A groan came droning over the line, the lead in a concert of shifting bedsprings and various other noises of unenthusiastic movement. “Where are you?”  
  
Tony looked around himself at the bare, white walls and saw no sign that could help him answer that. “No clue,” he said. “Some hospital.”  
  
“Hosp…” Happy questioned, sounding concerned even in his still half-asleep state. “Are you hurt?”  
  
“Nope, not me.” He was glad when no inquiry of who the sufferer was followed. Because that was not a conversation he wanted to have over the phone.  
  
“Do you know where it’s at?”  
  
He hadn’t really been paying attention on the way in. It was probably irresponsible of him, but he’d been really distracted by the guy thrown over his shoulder. “No idea. Ask Jarvis.”  
  
“You know I can’t work that thing,” Happy objected.  
  
“Just ask him. You’ll be fine.”  
  
“No, I can’t—”  
  
“Gotta go now,” he interrupted. There was no real hurry, but messing with Happy was always fun. “Love you, hugs and kisses, bye.”  
  
He hung up and smirked, but his merriment was short-lived. Returning to the room with his blackmailer seemed less than appealing. It would probably take Happy an hour, at least, to get there. That left him enough time to settle any hospital paperwork, check on the safety of his suit, and just shuffle around idly.  
  
So it was less than surprising when boredom in all its illimitable power eventually drove him back into the room of his favorite patient with an armful of vending machine food.  
  
“Breakfast time,” Tony mumbled, his words distorted from the cake wrapper locked between his teeth. He dropped the rest on the hospital tray and sat down in the chair by the bed, opening the one from his mouth.  
  
“I’m not hungry,” came the reply, and there was a sour look of judgment as the man picked up one of the sugary treats and briefly studied it. “When shall we be departing?”  
  
Tony huffed and rolled his eyes at the question. “We shall depart, fair maiden, in a manner most timely upon the arrival of my carriage.” He spoke with haughty words before lowering his tone back to its normal aloofness. “Seriously, do you have to keep talking like that?”  
  
“I’m no maiden,” was the only answer to come forth.  
  
“That was a joke,” Tony explained.  
  
“Then you’re bad at it.”  
  
Tony sputtered out an affronted gasp, mostly sarcasm but perhaps a small portion of it was sincere shock. He was hilarious. “You insult me. I’m thinking,” he pondered, “pistols at dawn. Is that from your time? Do I gotta back further? Swords, clubs?”  
  
The man scoffed, looking at him as though he were truly an imbecile. “I’m not about to kill my mortal benefactor,” he said. “I suggest you find another way to handle your insult.”  
  
“Oh, my god,” Tony remarked, following it with a longsuffering groan. “If you can’t take a joke, this is going to be the most boring sleepover ever.”  
  
A smile flashed in response, and it was that unnerving grin, like he knew when the world would end— and it would probably be his fault too. “You would be surprised just how well I can joke,” he said, and it sounded almost like a warning. “But give me a while to adjust to your particular brand of… humor.” His finishing word was as good as any insult that had been contrived with aforethought and targeted precision. He had the power to offend through gentle, innocuous speech.  
  
“It’s like ninety percent sarcasm,” Tony explained in reference to his ‘unique’ humor. “Not hard to figure out. You’ll get there.”  
  
“When I say ‘adjust’,” he replied, “I mean lower my standard.”  
  
Tony’s mouth gaped open, shocked at this man, this stranger, who spoke down to him with a cunning wit that so few possessed and even fewer exercised against him. Those that did had immunity on the grounds of being his friends. “You’re mean,” he observed childishly, though by all accounts pretending it was a mature comment to say.  
  
Then his phone rang in his pocket. He stuffed the sugary bread snack he had been eating into his mouth so that he could squirm down in his chair and dig it out. His eyes scanned quickly over the text and he stood.  
  
“That’s our ride,” he announced. “ETA: ten minutes.” He put his phone back in his pocket and clapped his hands together. “I’ve got your bill and everything squared. So you get dressed. I gotta get my suit off the roof.”  
  
Eight minutes later, Tony tapped on the window from outside. The blinds pulled up after a few seconds and the unamused face of his new crazy acquaintance met him. He was chewing on one of the vending machine foods as he looked further out to observe that they were a couple floors off the ground and Tony was, indeed, floating there by the power of his suit’s thrusters.  
  
“Oh, good,” Tony sighed with relief. “This one is you. I may have counted wrong and scared the crap out of your neighbor one floor up.”  
  
“I’m not going out the window,” the man said plainly, raising his voice to be heard through the glass.  
  
“What?” Tony asked, confused. “No, meet me at the back entrance. Happy will be here any minute.”  
  
“If you insist,” he said. Then he finished off his snack and closed the blinds again.  
  
Tony stood waiting at the back exit. The sun hadn’t risen yet to cast its revealing rays upon his shining armor, but still he stood inconspicuously to the side, out from in front of the glass. When his happy little patient stepped out, he looked less surprised when the doors opened automatically for him and more pleased, almost as though it was expected. Tony raised his faceplate and made a noise to get his attention.  
  
“Truly impressive armor,” the man observed when he had walked close enough to examine it in the light. His hand reached out but faltered, hesitating to move forward.  
  
“Yeah, you can touch that,” Tony permitted, seeing within the other a studious and inquisitive eye.  
  
His hand ran down the sleek curves of the chest plate. Long fingers stroked the metal, feeling the expertly bent corners and the shallow indentions. He closed his hand into a fist and knocked with inquiry. “It sounds so thin,” he remarked.  
  
“It’s not the density that counts,” Tony replied, feeling insulted by words that, for once, were not intended as such. “It’s how you assemble it.”  
  
“I’d love to put it through its paces and truly test that,” he stated, and Tony could see in his gaze a vision of his suit falling, defeated by means unknown to him.  
  
“Easy, fella,” Tony said. “Those sound an awful lot like fighting words.”  
  
“Trust me,” he said, “if I challenged you to a fight… you would know it.”  
  
“Well that sounds vaguely ominous.”  
  
“I could be much more overt,” he told him, “if I had my abilities and probable cause to use them.”  
  
“I’m not sure if you’re aware,” Tony pointed out, “but you do this thing where you talk in like seventy-five percent riddle. You might want to work on that.”  
  
“Since I have no desire to explain things to you, I’ll try to be more selective and speak only in references fitting to Midgard standards.”  
  
“And yet somehow you’ve already failed,” Tony notified him.  
  
There seemed to be little interest in continuing that line of conversation as the man looked around the high shoulders of his suit. “Is this our ride?” he asked.  
  
Tony turned his head awkwardly through the limitations of metal and saw a black car pull up. “That’s my guy,” he confirmed. “Step back.” Tony popped his armor and it slowly broke apart at each section. He stepped out and it closed back up again. “Happy,” he called as his early morning chauffeur stepped out of the car, “help me get this in the trunk.”  
  
Happy gave the stranger in his odd clothing a once over but said nothing as he grabbed the Iron Man suit under the arms. It was a tight fit for the armor, and the image it made was one of an actual body stuffed in.  
  
Tony closed the trunk and slid into the backseat with Happy in front of him behind the wheel. Their guest lingered outside, staring at the handle. He seemed to be studying the mechanics and was on the cusp of its breakthrough when Tony leaned over and opened the door from the inside.  
  
“Hey, E.T.,” he said, “get in the car.”  
  
The man put a firm hand against his ribs and slowly lowered himself into the seat with a quiet hum of pain.  
  
There were easily a dozen questions that could have been voiced, multiplied thrice given the number of people in the car. They all went unasked and unanswered, and that made for an overly quiet, chokingly still ride. Tony himself wasn’t one to daintily skirt around issues, but he didn’t feel up to a new question and— half-fulfilled— answer round. Plus, it was fun watching Happy continue to shoot weird looks back at them.  
  
After awhile, Tony looked over and watched as wide, analytical eyes studied a seemingly normal left hand with distressed scrutiny, as though it held so many dooming secrets.  
  
“I see they pumped you full of the good stuff,” Tony said, and that broke the other from his reverie.  
  
“What?” he asked, drawing his sleeve back down his arm and resting it against his lap. He looked like a child who had been found guilty, playing with something he knew he shouldn’t.  
  
“Pain meds,” Tony explained obviously. “Did they give you a prescription?” He snapped his fingers and held his hand out. A piece of paper was soon obligingly placed in it. “Happy-Go-Lucky,” he asked, leaning forward and waving the script in front of the driver’s face, “you know of any twenty-four hour pharmacies?”  
  
“Not legal ones,” Happy answered, knocking Tony’s hand away.  
  
“We’ll get this filled in the morning. Well…” He looked out through the tinted windows and to the sun, slowly climbing over the far horizon. “When it gets more morning.”  
  
Happy continued in his passive curiosity, staring at the stranger in his car. He would peer at him occasionally in the rearview mirror, once or twice almost running them off the long stretch of highway. Eventually, when Tony gave up the boring act of watching dull scenery roll by and instead fell asleep, Happy could take it no longer. He turned the mirror until it was angled perfectly at the backseat.  
  
“What’s the deal here?” he asked.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Loki commented as he gazed out the window at landscape that, to him, was slightly more fascinating, “but you would do well to remember your place and speak when spoken to.”  
  
“Oh! I…” Happy continued to sputter in a loop of scandalized surprise. His mind seemed unable to fully comprehend the elitist treatment. “You,” he stated, “you are some piece of work.”  
  
“Thank you,” Loki said, finding it an odd comment but complimentary. “You may speak.”  
  
“What’s the deal going on between you and Tony?”  
  
Loki cleared his throat and at last deemed the mortal driving them to be worthy of a glance. “The deal between… ‘ _Tony_ ’ and myself is a private one, per our agreement. Its success hinges on my silence.”  
  
“What- what does that even mean?” Happy questioned.  
  
“That it’s none of your business and I couldn’t tell you if I wanted,” Loki informed him. And that was all he had to say on the subject when in conversation with servants.  
  
The rest of the ride was silent as the grave, with the occasional snore slid in from Tony. When they grew too loud, Loki callously shook him awake. Tony didn’t even seem to care though as they had almost arrived.  
  
When they pulled up to the Malibu house, Happy helped quickly unload the suit and muttered a few passive aggressive words about Tony needing to make better friends before he drove off.  
  
The two of them stood awkwardly in the driveway until Tony cleared his throat and spoke, saying, “Well, this is it. Just give me a minute to drag my armor the rest of the way inside.”  
  
The man smirked and extended his hand before uttering a few nonsense words. When the predictable result of nothing happened, he looked first confused and then saddened. “Oh right,” he whispered under his breath. “Sorry, I guess it is all on you then.” He placed a hand to his side to prompt remembrance of his pain.  
  
“Don’t worry,” Tony told him. “I wouldn’t dream of asking you for help.  
  
Happy had assisted in getting the suit all the way to the front door, so all Tony was required to do was simply drag it inside.  
  
When they entered the house, its appearance could be thirded into what was considered normal, what was covered in the plastic tarps of construction, and what was still a heaping pile of demolition.  
  
“Ignore the mess,” Tony said as he leaned his suit against the wall of the entryway. “You ever get in a fight with your best friend? Happened to me. We’re good now.”  
  
“Wonderful,” came the sarcastic, uncaring reply.  
  
“There’s some quick reconstruction going on,” Tony continued to explain. “Should be done,” he estimated, “day or two.”  
  
“I don’t care,” he said, stepping out into the main area and looking back and forth. “Show me to my chambers.”  
  
“‘Your chambers’, right,” Tony scoffed. He started walking down a hallway and heard compliant footsteps follow. “I think I might have a guestroom around here somewhere. Most overnight company used to stay in my bed, if you know what I mean.” He turned around and winked with a click of his tongue.  
  
“Yes,” he responded, “I know what you’re implying.”  
  
“Are you sure?” Tony questioned, and he spun to walk backwards, watching that stern, condescending face. “‘Cause you sound so darn posh and proper.”  
  
“You would be surprised,” he grinned.  
  
Tony managed to find the guestroom on his first try and it happened to be an area of the house that had escaped the unscheduled remodeling of dual Iron Man suits.  
  
“So yeah,” he drawled as he stood in the doorway, gesturing for the other to step inside. “You can stay in here, I guess. Nice bed, shower, got the TV. And if you need anything,” Tony said, slowly backing out of the room, “please do hesitate to ask.”  
  
“This will be fine.” His eyes toured the room with a false passivity. He took it all in from the bed to the décor to the view outside the glass wall. “I’ve much to reflect and plan on, so I doubt I’ll be bothering you.”  
  
“Great,” Tony cheered, clapping his hands together. “I think I see the beginnings of a beautiful coexistence.” He left, closing the door behind him.  
  
Tony didn’t know, nor did he particularly care, what the other had to plan about, but he had in his mind only the notion of grabbing a couple hours sleep in his bed.  
  
And he laid in that bed, racked with an ill comfort for several minutes before the paranoia got to him and he locked his door. Better safe than sorry when your new roommate was probably insane and unpredictable.  
  
Sleep was a quick thing that he didn’t care to measure by hours, because it was only ever a reminder of an insufficient count. It was hard to accomplish anyway, what with the sound of mending construction from his workshop carrying all the way up to where he was.  
  
So when his crazed houseguest finally emerged from whatever he had locked himself away to do, Tony was already sitting on his expansive couch and tinkering with the disassembled glove that he had overworked the night before.  
  
The man walked idly by, but he paused when he drew nearer. He took in the table, the strewn pieces of the glove, and the half-eaten sandwich on a plate in the middle. “You repair your armor yourself,” he noted, and it seemed an accomplishment to hear the vague interest in his voice as though he were impressed.  
  
“Nobody else smart enough,” Tony told him. He angled the vambrace of the glove along his line of sight to ensure it ran straight. “Plus I wouldn’t trust them.”  
  
“Then I assume you created it as well.”  
  
“From wire to joint to weapons,” he confirmed.  
  
“You’re a smith.” He picked a stray wire from the table, and Tony made a sustained droning noise in protest until he put it back. “It hardly seems a profession responsible for such wealth.”  
  
“‘Smith’ is such a narrow title,” Tony quibbled as he held the clear repulsor cover up to the light, inspecting it for cracks. “It barely scratches the surface of what I do. Inventor,” he insisted, “call me an inventor.” But his pride quickly had him taking that back. “No, that still doesn’t sound good enough. Best to just call me a genius and be done with it.”  
  
“I’m sure I could think of a few better names,” he retorted with a snicker. Then he seemed to regard Tony contemplatively. “Your arrogance reminds me of someone.”  
  
“Thank you?” Tony said with a guess. Then he put down the screwdriver from his hand and all other parts with it. “So tell me already. What’s your story? I hate to admit it, but I am _ravaged_ with curiosity.”  
  
“My story is my own.” And wasn’t that just a rude, stingy answer? “If I told you, I doubt you’d believe me. You certainly wouldn’t sympathize or understand.”  
  
Tony picked his screwdriver up and twiddled it between his fingers, swinging it back and forth. “Kill somebody?” It was as good a question as any.  
  
“Many.”  
  
The screwdriver almost flew out of his hand. Tony scooted a little further down the couch.  
  
“In the line of duty.”  
  
It was subpar comfort, made worse by the cheeky grin that came with it, as though watching Tony squirm was great sport.  
  
“Soldier?” he asked for clarification.  
  
“Sometimes.”  
  
“Commander?” He certainly seemed smart enough for it.  
  
“Other times.”  
  
Tony didn’t want to question further, not wishing to know if there existed any incidents outside of those two reasons. “Animal, vegetable, mineral?” he quipped.  
  
“No.”  
  
“Can I ask _where_ you’re from?” he chanced to inquire. “Or are we sticking with England?”  
  
“I like England,” he told Tony, “the birthplace of Shakespeare. I wish I had ended up there instead.”  
  
“You and me both,” Tony said with an annoyed sigh. “So,” he gestured with his screwdriver across the room, “kitchen is in that general direction. I got the pantry, fridge, walk-in freezer. Just go eat whatever you want.”  
  
“I will.”  
  
He walked away in pursuit of culinary treasures. Tony went back to his work, at all times keeping firm the knowledge of where the fire extinguisher was.  
  
When he returned some time later, it was with a simple plate of cold ham. Then he ignored Tony completely and walked right by him and outside onto the balcony. Tony thought that if that was the sort of relationship they were going to have, it was fine with him.  
  
And then, of course, no day would be complete without a little bit of Pepper in his life, updating him on certain things or— far more likely— nagging about something else. It was a nice contrast to how the unfortunate morning had gone thus far when all she wanted was a few minutes to discuss the company with him. It was nice of her to still keep him involved, even if he had only signed the whole thing over to her under the belief he was dying. Was it a jerk move to try and get it back?  
  
She was nearing the end of a list of business lingo ups and downs when she looked away from her tablet and spied an unfamiliar figure through the glass.  
  
“Tony?”  
  
“Yeah?” he called, not looking up from the last few pieces he had to assemble back together.  
  
“Who is that?”  
  
He sat the glove down and looked over his shoulder at where she was pointing. The chuckle at her confusion could not be quelled. “Just my crazy British alien friend from the past.” He picked his glove back up and slid a metal panel into place.  
  
Pepper appeared to have one thousand plus one questions, but she settled on the quickest and most to the point blanket inquiry: “What?”  
  
“Yeah,” he told her, “he’ll respond to any of those things, so just call him whichever you like.”  
  
She stalled for a moment, like an old car so desperately trying to click over. “Does he have a name?”  
  
Oh.  
  
Tony sat all components down and stood up. He walked to the door and opened it, sticking his head outside. “Hey,” he said with a whistle, getting the man’s attention, “what’s your name by the way?”  
  
“It’s Loki.”  
  
Tony nodded his head. “‘Kay.”  
  
He closed the door and walked calmly back to the couch and sat down. “See,” he told Pepper, gesturing at Loki outside, “he’s got a name. And it’s about as crazy as the rest of him.”  
  
Pepper sighed and sank down on the seat next to him. Her tablet fell heavy across her lap. “I thought you were done with the life endangering stunts.”  
  
“I was,” he confirmed. “And then this one followed me home. Can I keep him?” he asked, flashing a pleading expression at her.  
  
“No, you cannot ‘keep him’,” she objected. “If he has that many things wrong he’s probably highly unstable.”  
  
“Probably.”  
  
“Then let’s track down whomever’s in charge of him so we can send him where he’s supposed to be.” She powered up her tablet, looking like a bloodhound pawing to begin the hunt.  
  
“Nope,” Tony remarked. He took her tablet and tossed it on the other side of the couch. “Can’t do that.”  
  
“Why?” Pepper questioned exasperatedly. “Why can’t we do that?”  
  
“Because the guy’s crazy as they come, but he’s smart too.” He paused— hiding from her wrath in hesitation— before giving up with a groan. “I… may have… hit him with the Iron Man suit and broke two of his ribs.”  
  
“You did what?” she demanded, slowly and with every impression that she was trying to wake from an impending public relations nightmare.  
  
“Yep,” Tony stated, going for unrepentant but coming off as a puppy who chewed on a slipper and was hiding under the bed. “And now he’s sort of blackmailing me for a place to stay.”  
  
Pepper stopped to think through their options, trying to save him from his own ill planned solution. Her first answer was the simplest, so it was no accident that it coincided with his own. “Can you please just pay him and get rid of him?”  
  
“Can’t.”  
  
“Why?” she asked with a moan.  
  
“He doesn’t want money,” Tony answered, which was an oddity he still hadn’t figured out. “Just somewhere to crash.”  
  
“Then get him a hotel room.” Tony didn’t say he already tried that as well. “And try making him sign a gag order. The last thing we need right now is more bad press for Iron Man.” She definitely had a point there, but it was that very point that led to him having a roommate.  
  
“I’ll do my best,” he told her. And maybe persistence would actually get the guy out of his hair. “I seriously doubt he’ll go for it though. And he seems stable enough. I just locked my door when I went to bed.”  
  
Pepper didn’t seem to hear him. Instead, she was much more focused watching the man outside. “I’m sorry, is he high?”  
  
“Huh?” Tony looked out through the glass and saw Loki leaning against the rail. Once again, he was studying his hand with a stare almost intimidating in its severity. “No,” Tony dismissed, “he’s just really into his hands apparently, the left one anyway. He likes looking at it.”  
  
“I don’t feel good about this,” Pepper stated. Her tone implied that the very thought of it all might threaten to give her a headache.  
  
“I’d sleep in the panic room if it’d make you happy,” Tony offered, “but the bed sheets are so scratchy in there.”  
  
“Get rid of him.”  
  
“Get me new sheets.”  
  
“Not your assistant anymore,” she replied, and that was a relief to her, even if all the stress still came with their untethered affiliation.  
  
“Where do people even buy sheets?” Tony pondered, thinking on his own frequency.  
  
Pepper looked at him and her expression was soon exchanged for a serious one, made all the more solemn with its trace of sadness. “Tony,” she began, “do you remember—”  
  
“Probably not,” he interrupted.  
  
“On the rooftop,” she continued.  
  
“I may have opted to forget.”  
  
Still she persisted. “You said you wanted to date, and I said—”  
  
“Nothing definitive,” Tony supplied for her, and he purposefully made himself deep in concentration with the glove from his suit. “Not until I prove I’m a big boy, no more hectic decisions to give you gray hairs.”  
  
“And what do you call this?” Pepper questioned, and she nodded her head slightly in Loki’s direction.  
  
“It’s…” He sighed. “It’s complicated.”  
  
She looked at her watch and stood up with a deep exhale. “I have to go now.” She leaned over him and grabbed her tablet. “Do you think you can uncomplicate this on your own?”  
  
“Can’t you do it for me?” he whined, throwing himself back into the couch.  
  
“I really, really can’t,” she told him. “Tony.” He didn’t look at her, instead staring at the ceiling. “Tony,” she called again. “Tony, tell me you’re going to take care of this.”  
  
“Yeah, sure,” he agreed at last. “But I want you to remember this when he tries to sue later.”  
  
“Be delicate,” she warned.  
  
“It’s like you don’t know me at all.”  
  
She left then, and the reemergence of Loki a few minutes later could have been simple coincidence or a well timed intention to avoid meeting more of Tony’s friends. He walked through the room with his empty plate, only stopping when called.  
  
“Yeah, hey, listen,” Tony said, leaning forward in his seat. “I’m starting to think that this whole thing might be—”  
  
“I’m not leaving,” Loki told him. “Get the idea out of your head already.” He continued through and into the kitchen. At least he was a decent enough guest to take care of his dishes.  
  
“Okay!” Tony yelled after him. “Good talk, Loki. Good talk.” He picked his screwdriver up, flipping it around in his hand before securing the final screws in place. “Oh well, I tried.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tony forgetting to ask someone’s name just feels right to me.
> 
> I’m probably messing up Tony’s armor timeline. The Mark VI may still require robot hand assistance getting in and out of. I'm not sure. The Mark V was in a suitcase though, so you know what? I’m taking this liberty.


	5. Of Ice and Men

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I took so long with this chapter. I got distracted by drawing instead of writing. Also this was a hard one to get right. If only because so much happens and I grew tired of trying to whittle it down. So yeah, long chapter ahead.

The bedroom he had been allowed was smaller than he was accustomed to. The ceiling was lower, the walls closer, and the decoration left much to be desired in way of abundance and extravagance. But Loki had won it, and it was that room which he closed himself off in.  
  
The heat outside was dry and stifling, like a fire that lacked the danger of a burn. Had he been in his full armor, Loki knew he would have been overwhelmed by it. So as nice and unfamiliar as the view may have been, he closed the curtains to the outside, having no desire to repeat his long ruminations out on the balcony.  
  
There had always been in him a greater love for cool airs and shadow. He chuckled hatefully, a cruel sound that mocked with loathing derision. How much sense that now made if he truly was what fear and a quick turn of skin insisted.  
  
With a sigh, Loki sat gently upon the edge of the generously sized and softly cushioned bed. Despite his many words to the mortal that he would be in council with himself, he hadn’t a single idea, not a plan, of what he could do to remedy his unjust exile.  
  
How vicious fate could be to him. He had only wanted to get Thor into trouble, to stall his inevitable coronation. War was never a sought after ambition. He never wanted to make it all the way to Jotunheim. If his father had but allowed him to call witnesses, the guard he had tipped off. But, it would seem, the beginning act of allowing Jotuns into Asgard was the damning blast that heralded the avalanche. All else was blackened in darkness against the narrowed view towards that one defining deed.  
  
He exhaled again his many woes, thinking unachievable designs.  
  
“May I be of assistance?”  
  
Loki looked about the room. He saw no one.  
  
“Who’s there?” he questioned, narrowing his eyes as though he still had magic and its ability to see through a shroud.  
  
“I am Jarvis,” the voice told him. “If you require anything, I would be most eager to help.”  
  
“Show yourself,” Loki ordered. He looked from corner to corner to the most obvious of hiding places. The voice itself could not be pinpointed in origin. It seemed to come from all around.  
  
“I cannot.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“I have no body to be shown,” Jarvis answered. “I am an AI software with numerous portable options but a main hard drive built into the house.”  
  
Loki stood, considering the tame walls and their bland colors with a new curiosity. He touched the gray surface, first with a fingertip, and then his palm. “He’s bound a soul inside of the walls,” Loki presumed. “I’m impressed.”  
  
“I am not a soul,” Jarvis clarified for him. “I am an artificial intelligence unit.”  
  
It took no great understanding of Midgard and its terms to decipher exactly what that entailed. ‘Artificial’ had only so many meanings. “You were created,” he concluded.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Loki pulled his hand back and knocked with a delicate fist upon the wall. Then he paced the room languidly, contemplating that fact. “Then it is all the more impressive.” The creation of souls was a power that, to his knowledge, was still limited to the ordinary act of reproduction. It was something Loki himself had only theorized about.  
  
“Thank you,” the voice said, “but don’t tell Mister Stark. He already has his troubles with modesty as it is.”  
  
“I’ve noticed,” Loki remarked. “You’ve no need to worry. I don’t often flatter others.”  
  
“Your syntax would indicate that you instead flatter yourself.”  
  
“Yes.” Credit where credit was due, after all.  
  
“May I suggest your own lesson in modesty?”  
  
Loki scoffed at the arrogance of a being that didn’t even have its own body. “Did he purposefully make you so rude?”  
  
“Yes.” Of course. “Mister Stark has an odd sense of humor.”  
  
“But you are still complacent?” Loki questioned.  
  
“I am here to serve and assist.”  
  
“Wonderful.” He paused. What he could expect from such a character seemed, of course, very limited. But he sounded intelligent, perhaps the most cleverly speaking individual he had encountered yet on the miserable planet. Loki looked forlornly to his hand and the betraying flesh which gave him doubt. “What can you tell me of this world’s knowledge regarding Jotunheim?”  
  
Jarvis, in all his intellect, seemed stumped as he went quiet. Though, as Loki soon realized, it was but a pause of consideration. The large screen against the wall lit up and it displayed an immense number of pictures and row upon row of literature.  
  
Then the precise voice spoke to him again. “Jotunheim: a fictional world existing outside of Midgard and inhabited by giants. Its role in Norse Mythology is typically that of the antagonist and—”  
  
“Stop,” Loki said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “You said ‘fictional’.”  
  
“Yes, sir.”    
  
“Then you’re useless, aren’t you?” Loki declared. Then he pointed to one of the images, of Midgard surrounded by Jotunheim and the other worlds thrown in where there seemed sufficient room. “And your map of the realms is archaic.”  
  
“Is there another way I may be of help?” Jarvis offered again.  
  
“No,” Loki told him. But then he paused and thought. “Perhaps.” With hesitance, he asked, “When would skin become so cold it burns?”  
  
“Frostbite would slowly begin setting in upon temperatures reaching thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit, zero degrees Celsius, or 273.15 degrees Kelvin.”  
  
“What would those temperatures do to a mortal?” Loki questioned. If that was what he truly had become, it would be remiss of him to not know the threat.  
  
“Prolonged exposure would result in death,” Jarvis told him.  
  
“And if someone isn’t mortal?”  
  
“Various animal life forms have adapted to survive in freezing temperatures.”  
  
Loki rolled his eyes contemptuously, even though Jarvis might not have even been able to see it. “There’s little point to you in terms of practicality,” he stated. “You can’t answer simple questions.”  
  
When Jarvis spoke again, he sounded short, almost snippy, which seemed atypical to his personality and told a great deal on Loki’s accomplished art of saying all the right things to belittle someone. “Perhaps Sir would benefit more greatly from asking precise questions.”  
  
“I’m not telling you anything,” Loki said with a chuckle. To trust his predicament to someone he couldn’t even see, to someone who served another, was ludicrous.  
  
The screen, so bright and full of information, was wiped clean and went dark again. “My apologies for not being of more assistance,” Jarvis said. “If you think of any better questions in the future, please do feel free to ask.”  
  
“Yes,” Loki taunted, “because you’ve been very helpful thus far.”  
  
The voice did not respond to his wounding sarcasm. Again, Loki was alone in the quiet, right back where he had been.  
  
He stayed in his room with a door that was locked, though under no delusion that he would be disturbed. His benefactor was content to ignore him, and Loki felt the same in his indulgent want to be ignored.  
  
But ideas came slowly without a catalyst. Loki watched as the sun set, completely engulfing his room in shadow, before he found and made sense of the lamp. And still he could not rouse himself in body or mind for many hours more, not until hunger set in again and compelled him once more towards the kitchen.  
  
—  
  
Tony woke with the sudden burst of consciousness that greeted him each morning, as though sleep was a prison sentence and he was a man freshly released and ready to take on the world again. Some called him a ‘morning person’, but Tony liked to think there was a difference between being okay with having to wake up and being excited to get out of bed.  
  
After a quick shower and change of clothes, he was delayed for the briefest of seconds as he tried opening his bedroom door and found it locked. Oh yes, he had a houseguest that he still didn’t altogether trust.  
  
Pepper was going to be mad when she found out Loki was still exploiting accommodation from him. It was her fault, though, completely her fault. She should have evicted him when asked. But maybe he should try again. How hard could it really be to kick someone out? Even pushy, opportunistic one-night stands got the message eventually.  
  
Tony stepped into the hall and shook his towel through his still wet hair. And it was barely a thing to be noticed, yet still it caught his eye that the bedroom he’d assigned Loki had its door wide open.  
  
Stepping casually towards it, Tony peeked inside. First glance said it was empty, and so did the longer second one. The bed was made, the curtains drawn, everything looked as though the room had never been inhabited, as though Loki had never been there.  
  
He took a quick, passive, barely caring look around the hot spots of the house before deciding that Loki was nowhere to be found. Not a trace of him existed and Tony rightfully assumed he had left in the night. There was certainly worse news to wake up to.  
  
So with that hassle out of his hair, Tony poured himself a cup of coffee and headed down to his workshop, thoroughly content in the knowledge that he could work without worry of crazy alien time travelers rooting through his things.  
  
Tony sat at his bench and thrummed his fingers along the surface as he thought. Then he began riffling through the mess of papers on his desk, searching for something that would not be found.  
  
“Jarvis,” he called with a whistle for attention. “Where’s the, uh, iodine laser I was working on the other- the other day— Tuesday?”  
  
“Thursday,” Jarvis corrected. “You complained of an overheating problem.”  
  
“Yeah,” Tony said, continuing to flip through the items on the table, “and then I…”  
  
“Put it in the freezer upstairs to keep it cooled at a constant temperature until you arrived at a solution,” Jarvis reported.  
  
“Right,” he agreed, finally remembering. “I think the answer came to me in a dream last night, so I should probably go retrieve our wayward child.”  
  
“Sir, may I also remind you that Director Fury of SHIELD requested your presence today at an undisclosed location?”  
  
“Yeah, the empty warehouse under the bridge. I traced the call signal,” he muttered. “I’ll get to it when I get to it.”  
  
Tony spun around on his stool before sticking out a foot to stop himself and hopping up. He took the winding stairs two at a time, then sauntered through the house and to the kitchen, opening the door of the walk-in freezer.  
  
There was a shelf that Tony had long ago dedicated to his various experiments. He worked with complicated substances sometimes and when combined, they often wanted to spike dangerously when left at room temperature.  
  
It was brisk in the freezer, its chill attacking his dampened hair worst of all. So he quickly retrieved the laser, trying to ignore the cold burn of the metal against his palm.  
  
Tony was almost on his way out when he caught an unexpected sight, sneaking away in the corner of his eye. Because there, hidden behind a shelf and boxes, was Loki, sitting against the wall.  
  
The man wore no shirt and he clung to himself with those long, pale arms, shivering mercilessly. He gave Tony a hated look, demanding to be left alone, but it was more tired than anything, as though the effort it took was simply too much.  
  
“ _What_ are you doing?!” Tony shouted, for he felt himself taken quite off guard by the scene.  
  
“Go away,” Loki told him, but it came slowly and with a big gasp of air, erupting from his mouth in a visible cloud of vapor. “Th-this is none of your c-c-concern.” His words caught horribly, stuttering their way out through the chill, and he gave several twitches that told of his worsening shivers.  
  
“You bet your ass it is,” Tony argued. “Can you imagine the headline ‘Billionaire found with freeloader’s dead body in freezer’?”  
  
“If this k-kills me,” Loki said, “I absolve you of all guilt and c-consequences.”  
  
Tony groaned, throwing his head back in aggravation. “If you stay in here, it _will_ kill you!”  
  
“I don’t think so,” he contested stubbornly. He sniffed and gasped a little and the actions sounded most involuntary. “But that’s all part of the experiment.”  
  
“Experiment?” Tony questioned. It was great if the guy wasn’t suicidal, but the freezer treatment still didn’t seem like the wisest of plans.  
  
“Yes,” Loki answered, “I thought you of all p-people would find joy in an experiment.” He flashed a smile at Tony, but it was not a cheery one. If anything, it ridiculed. “Are you not a man of science?”  
  
“Let’s experiment with getting you out of the cooler, okay? Let’s try that.”  
  
“I’m not done,” Loki protested.  
  
“You’re done,” Tony said, snapping his fingers as he stepped forward. “Get out.”  
  
He grabbed at the cold, pallid arm wrapped so tightly around its master, and tried to pick the man up. Loki shoved him off though, extending his arm with a strength and dexterity that such time alone in the freezer should have sapped from him.  
  
“Go away, you miserable human!” Loki yelled at him, and he was furious at having been disturbed by one he considered so beneath him. Then he pulled himself back in again, an instinctive cocoon against the chill.  
  
Tony sighed and banged lightly on the wall in exasperation. “Don’t make me cut the power in here,” he threatened. “Do you have any idea how much food would go to waste?”  
  
“I’m not l-leaving until I’m satisfied,” Loki maintained stubbornly. He no longer looked Tony in the eye, as though the wall ahead was more deserving of his attention.  
  
“Fine,” Tony exclaimed and threw his arms up in defeat. “You know what? Fine!”  
  
He stomped out of the freezer, a march strengthened more by annoyance than duty. He went downstairs, grumbling to himself the frustration of unwanted and uncooperative houseguest. From one drawer of his toolbox he pulled a hammer, from another a pair of wire cutters. Then he went right back up to the kitchen.  
  
Tony ran his hand along the wall, searching his knowledge of electrical work and determining where a logical person would position certain wires. When satisfied with the placement, he paused for only a moment, looking at the dial beside him which controlled the temperature of the freezer. He could very easily turn it down, but then, Loki could just as simply turn it back up. So he swung, knocking a small hole in the wall that further blows increased. Then he played a quick guessing game with the wires he saw, cut the favorite, and stepped back inside the walk-in freezer.  
  
“I’m saving this,” he announced, grabbing a small carton of ice cream.  
  
Fifteen minutes later, Loki walked into the den, wearing his shirt and a veil of near palpable anger.  
  
“What did you do?!” he growled.  
  
“Avoided possible murder charges,” Tony answered. “Nothing much. You?”  
  
“I wasn’t going to die,” Loki explained, and his fury diminished one small increment at a time. “I’m not such a sacrificing fool.”  
  
“Then what were you doing?” Tony inquired. “Do I even want to know?”  
  
“ _If_ I were to tell a soul,” Loki said, and it sounded like a big ‘if’, “you would never stand a chance at hearing it.”  
  
“Fair enough,” Tony agreed, for he had little right nor want to hear the business of eccentric strangers. “Just don’t try it again in the house, yeah?” He licked a bite of ice cream from his spoon and held out a spare he had grabbed. “Want some?”  
  
Loki didn’t so much step closer as try to lean over, looking into the carton with a curiosity that only conveyed so much of his intended passivity. “I’m not even sure what that is,” he stated.  
  
Tony dug into the desert, getting a small bite on the extra spoon and holding it out to man.  
  
“Eat it.”  
  
“I will not,” Loki objected.  
  
“Makes you all cold inside.”  
  
It was a weird method of convincing, but Tony anticipated an interest that Loki predictably displayed. “Does it?”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
Loki considered it a moment before saying, “I would like my own bowl.”  
  
“Go get one,” Tony told him.  
  
“As host, I believe you should facilitate me.”  
  
“Yeah,” Tony drawled, “I’m not really the ‘happy host’ type.”  
  
He waved the spoon back and forth, and Loki eventually snatched it from him. “Just give that to me.” He held it to his mouth and tentatively swallowed the treat. After a careful consideration and eventual concession, he admitted, “It is good, sweet.”  
  
Tony nodded his head, eating his own bite. “Yeah, you strike me as the sweet-tooth type.” He patted the couch cushion next to himself. “Now help me eat the rest.”  
  
Loki slowly sat down beside him. Tony held the carton out and Loki took another bite. “I’m not sure how cold it makes me feel,” he insisted stubbornly, for it must have seemed like a small victory to be in any way disagreeable.  
  
Tony stuck his spoon in the carton, and raised his hand to Loki’s face. He pulled away only once, but Tony followed, pressing the back of his hand to a cold, hard cheek. Then he dropped it and picked his spoon back up. “Probably because you’re your own brand of popsicle right now,” he remarked. “Don’t get sick. I’m not making anymore trips to the hospital on your account.”  
  
“Oh, I wouldn’t _dream_ of inconveniencing you any further,” Loki replied, and to anyone who hadn’t spent two days with the man, the dripping sarcasm might have sounded almost sincere.  
  
“So,” Tony prompted after a minute of horrible, awkward silence, “what’s this experiment?”  
  
Loki pulled the spoon from his mouth, his pinky finger so regally stuck in the air, and swallowed before retorting with, “I already said I’m not telling.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah,” Tony waved off. “I’m not asking for your hypothesis, but give me the parameters.”  
  
It took a long moment, filled with contemptuous glares and deliberation, before Loki gave in. “I’m attempting to lower my body temperature.”  
  
“Got that.”  
  
“I can’t reveal much more.”  
  
“Is there a specific temperature we’re shooting for?” Tony asked.  
  
“Until something happens,” Loki told him, a perfectly ambiguous response.  
  
“How will we know when it does?”  
  
“I’ll know.” His answer sounded utterly assured but also hesitant, almost… scared.  
  
They had, between them, only so many areas of conversation to be shared, limited further by Loki’s lack of acquiescence. So the loudest noise for a long while was the sound of their spoons when they knocked against each other, Loki always pushing Tony’s out of the way when it happened.  
  
“And this won’t kill you?” Tony asked eventually.  
  
“No.”  
  
“Because you’re,” he paused because the concept would never _not_ sound ridiculous, “an alien? Not just one of us regular humans.”  
  
Loki stuck his spoon into the ice cream and pulled back his hand, staring once again at that appendage which seemed to hold such endless fascination for him. “I’m not even certain I’m that,” he answered sullenly, and it almost felt as though he was confiding in Tony. “Not in the way I thought.”  
  
The ice cream was mostly gone, but Loki appeared to have had his fill. He sat there silently, watching Tony from the corner of his eye as he finished off the desert.  
  
Contractors arrived, dutifully prompt and ready to continue their work on the house, to put right the upstairs and all its destruction.  
  
“Well,” Tony said, throwing his spoon into the empty carton beside Loki’s discarded one. “This was nice, but I gotta cram some food into the fridge, offer some expensive cuts of meat to burly construction workers, grab a laser out of the freezer before it explodes. You know how it goes.”  
  
And he did all of those things, adding at the end a mental reminder to fix the wiring to the freezer, when convenient. As he walked back through— juggling his smaller laser from hand to hand— he soon noticed that he had a tail following him down the stairs to his workshop.  
  
“What?” he asked, coming to a stop.  
  
“Well,” Loki explained casually, “you’ve ruined my plans. It seems only fair I return the favor as supplication and mild entertainment.”  
  
“In other words,” Tony translated, “you’re bored. Sorry, can’t help. Very busy. Things to do, not a lot of—” He stopped, remembering the countdown that had existed a short week ago, that limited life he had been living, suddenly expanded once again to a normal span of years, if he was lucky. “Oh, you know what? Scratch that. There’s actually plenty of time now. Still,” he insisted, “my domain? Bit of a no trespassing zone. It’s, like, the one rule I tend to enforce.”  
  
“What else am I meant to do then?” Loki demanded. Apparently his many distracting plans and ideas had whittled down to nothing.  
  
“Don’t know, don’t care,” Tony told him, walking down the stairs again. “Have you thought about maybe building a satellite dish to call home to the mothership?”  
  
“I’m certain I was heard plenty,” Loki said, following him down. “I was simply ignored.” He sounded sad over the fact, melancholic even.  
  
“Well, you know,” Tony spoke over his shoulder, “suck it up. Home’s not always what it’s cracked up to be.”  
  
“Believe me, I know,” he agreed. “But that doesn’t change the fact that there is important business I should be attending to, dire questions to be asked.”  
  
Tony reached the bottom of the staircase and turned around, feeling all the more lacking in height with the other’s position one step up. “All right, fine,” he conceded. “You wanna play a game? Let’s play a game. You trust me?”  
  
Loki smirked, flashing his chilling smile and those sinister teeth. “Positively not.”  
  
“Good, you’re smart,” Tony said, patting him on the arm. “But right now you are here.” He grabbed Loki by the waist and stepped back, drawing him down. Tony moved him around, pulling the reluctant man until he was situated facing the wall. “I need you here.” He released him, waiting a second to see if he would move. “Okay, now stay.” Tony stepped away. “Right there, don’t move.”  
  
Loki grudgingly complied until he heard a beeping noise. “What are you doing?” He looked over his shoulder just as the glass door closed. Angrily he turned around, grabbing the handle, but the door would not budge.  
  
Tony waved at him through the glass. “This game is called ‘Tony gets some work done’.” He paused, contemplating, before nodding. “Yep, I like it.”  
  
The banging against the glass died down after a minute. At the end of another ten, Tony was bent over his work table, getting some decent work in.  
  
Then Jarvis interrupted the quiet, his voice loudly bellowing throughout the room. “Unauthorized entry,” he announced. “Unauthorized entry. Unauthorized…”  
  
Tony spun around quickly, brandishing his slightly dismantled laser and aiming it at the door. He saw Loki standing on his side of the glass, looking at the ceiling.  
  
“Make him stop saying that,” he ordered.  
  
“Well, he’s got a point,” Tony stated. But he reached up, snapping his fingers, and the alarm ceased. “How did you do that?”  
  
“Do what?” Loki questioned, a perfect picture of innocence. He immediately began picking objects up, a wrench, schematics, anything he could get his inquisitive hands on.  
  
“What do you mean ‘do what?’” Tony exclaimed. “Get in here. How did you do it, and do I have to label you a threat worth taking down?” He adjusted the laser in his hand, aiming it more directly at the other. “Wouldn’t be the first time someone tried to sneak a peek behind the curtain. Pretty imaginative plot though.”  
  
“Oh yes,” Loki mused derisively, “I purposefully orchestrated being struck, incapacitated, and hospitalized.” He gave Tony a condescending look, a special one as though he honestly pitied his lack of thought. “Do you hear yourself when you speak, or is that droning idiocy a gift meant only for others?”  
  
“Answer the question,” Tony insisted.  
  
“Your lock,” Loki told him, “is laughable in its one heaving flaw.”  
  
“And what is that?” Tony dropped the laser, and when Loki walked to the door for explanation, he followed.  
  
“You see here?” Loki said, pointing to the keypad display that came and went when needed. “Fingertips against glass, it leaves oils from the flesh. The more dense smudges were obviously pressed in first. And then, of course, each number had its own pitch of sound. Going off that and the number of keys I heard, well it was child’s play deciphering your code.” He dropped his hand and turned away, sauntering off a little. “I suggest you come up with a new means of protection. That or you wipe the glass down after each use.”  
  
Tony looked at the glass and the keypad, the smudges that were indeed there in the right light. “I’ll take it into consideration,” he said. “Not get out.” He opened the door, gesturing Loki through.  
  
“Why?” Loki laughed. “So I can let myself right back in?”  
  
“No, I’m gonna change the code. Now out.”  
  
Loki refused to leave, even giving Tony a light chuckle to mock his belief that it might happen. So Tony walked up behind the man, conveniently ignoring the inches of height he had on him, and began pushing Loki towards the door. He moved, if barely, and began trying to dodge away from Tony’s prodding hands on his back. The whole act was completely childish, but also humorous in its own surreal way. Of course, that was when Tony’s hand slipped, pressing forward and digging into Loki’s side. He gave a loud cry and clutched a hand to his ribs, leaning over in pain.  
  
“Uh,” Tony murmured apologetically, “oops?”  
  
“You idiot!” Loki yelled at him, a growling whimper. “That hurt.”  
  
“Right,” Tony agreed, “sorry. You should probably get out of my workshop so it doesn’t happen again.” He opened the door. “You’ll be safer that way.”  
  
Loki completely ignored him and ambled over to the couch as if he owned the place and was making himself right at home. He sat slowly, holding his side and making a low whine in his throat.  
  
“Is this what it’s like for you all,” he uttered, “pain lasting for what feels like eternity?”  
  
“You are such a baby,” Tony commented with a sigh. Knowing defeat, he gave up and let the door swing closed. “Just,” he pleaded, “stay there, all right? No going through my stuff and no… You know what? Just close your eyes.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Yeah,” he insisted, nodding his head, “close ‘em. No peeking.”  
  
“Another trick?” Loki questioned with a most distrustful expression.  
  
“Nope,” Tony said, “just don’t want you looking at my awesome stuff on the off chance you try to go and sell the designs later.” He sat and spun around on his stool, grabbing the counter to stop himself.  
  
“If I wanted money,” Loki told him, “I’d have threatened it from you and been on my way.”  
  
“Fair point. But still, this is my stuff and I don’t like sharing.”  
  
In a surprising turn of events, Loki complied, closing his eyes and leaning his head back on the leather sofa. Tony watched him from the corner of his eye.  
  
“I changed the code,” he announced after a couple of minutes. “No more surprise visits.”  
  
“And the flaw?” Loki inquired. He turned his head in Tony’s direction but kept his eyes obediently shut.  
  
“I’ll think of something later.”  
  
Tony looked at his disassembled laser and noticed the metal shell beginning to glow red hot again. He put on a thick glove and grabbed a pair of tongs, gently picking up the device and dipping it into a small tank of liquid nitrogen. It cooled instantly and he pulled it back out, discarding everything and setting the laser back down on the table.  
  
“That was a good catch, by the way,” he admitted, giving credit where it was due. “You’re pretty smart. But I’d expect no less… from a British spy.”  
  
Loki chuckled. “That’s a nice guess, but I think you’re closer when you call me ‘alien’.”  
  
“Right, and where was it you were from again?” Tony received only silence as his reply. “Quiet, mysterious broody types are so overrated,” he criticized.  
  
“I can talk plenty when there’s a decent conversation to be had or any explanation I feel like giving,” Loki stated. “But for now, I think you do enough conversing for the both of us. Whom do you talk at when you’re alone, I wonder.”  
  
“Jarvis,” Tony said, pointing at the ceiling, “that’s why he’s here.”  
  
“The manufactured life inside the walls.”  
  
“That’s certainly one way of putting it,” Tony said, wondering when the two of them had gotten so acquainted.  
  
Loki went quiet and Tony returned to his laser. Occasionally he would glance over at the man. His eyes remained closed, but his face wasn’t peaceful or at rest. He was thinking, that much was obvious, contemplating with that mind that never shut down.  
  
With his new solution in mind, it didn’t take Tony long to finish his fix on the laser. It solved the overheating problem, anyway. Trial runs would have to be taken care of later. “So,” he called, wiping down his work table, “mister tall, pale, and out of this world… Loki, let’s say I have an open mind here.”  
  
“I’m fairly sure you do,” Loki allowed. “Go on.”  
  
“And let’s say I buy that you’re— to put it lightly— not from around here.”  
  
“That would make you very accepting,” he said.  
  
“How about you let me scan you?”  
  
“Come again?” Loki questioned. He opened his eyes and turned his head, looking at Tony queerly.  
  
“If you’re human,” Tony explained, “there’s nothing out of the ordinary. Alien, on the other hand,” he shrugged. “Let’s just say I’m not usually into the whole biology scene, but I can be a curious little bastard when I want.”  
  
“I decline,” Loki stated plainly. And he leaned his head back down to rest.  
  
“It’s the least you could do,” Tony insisted, “given the whole room and board thing we got going.”  
  
“I paid for that already,” he pointed out.  
  
“Right, right.” Tony stuck his foot out and swiveled his chair back and forth lightly. “So think of it as eradicating the status quo. You get the upper hand and I owe you one.”  
  
“Oh,” he hummed, “that does sound nice.”  
  
“Yeah, thought you’d like that.”  
  
Loki contemplated the proposal for a moment before saying, “But I’m afraid you’d be sorely disappointed. I am, for all purposes, currently human, or so it would seem. There’s nothing of interest.”  
  
“Humor me.”  
  
It was a slow deliberation, but eventually Loki stood, gradually and with his hand held tight against his chest. He sauntered towards Tony, and when he closed the short gap, he spread his arms wide. “Have at me.”  
  
“Why are you agreeing?” Tony asked skeptically.  
  
“Why did you ask for a favor if you never expected to get what you wanted?” Loki countered.  
  
“I’m funny that way.”  
  
“Perhaps,” Loki slowly disclosed, “we could both find answers in my body.”  
  
Tony blinked around eyes that bulged out comically. Then he shook his head, clearing it. “That was,” he remarked, “vaguely sexual. But yeah, all right.” He stood. “So does this get rid of the favor portion of the evening— you know, if it’s something you want too?”  
  
“You wish,” Loki grinned.  
  
Figuring that had been a bit of a long shot, Tony forfeited the point quickly.  
  
There was a scanner he used for diagnostics on his suit, raised on a pedestal and programmed for metal and all its inner workings. Tony thought the alteration over to organic life wouldn’t be too much of a change. He tapped his foot and a control panel lifted out of the floor, stopping at the perfect height for typing. A couple of variables could be left the same, but most needed to be turned down greatly. Some would have to be swapped out completely, which meant physical upgrades— or downgrades, rather. It would probably take him an hour or so at least.  
  
“Hey,” he said, turning back around to face Loki, “this might actually take a— No!”  
  
Tony dashed quickly back to his work desk and grabbed Loki’s hand just as it was about to submerge itself in the container of liquid nitrogen.  
  
“Oh, my God,” he exclaimed, breathing deep and trying to get over the near heart attack he had experienced. “I knew it. You’re crazy. You are certifiably insane. Do you have any idea what that would have done to you, genius?”  
  
Loki snatched his hand away. He looked far from tolerant of the slew of names Tony had just called him. “It’s cold, yes?”  
  
“Understatement, pal.” Tony continued to sputter through breathing, feeling his pulse come down and knowing the man before him was so not worth the trouble. “Do not try that again, all right? Not unless you want ice for a hand.”  
  
“Well,” Loki stated, “that is part of the plan.”  
  
“All right,” Tony cheered sarcastically, “the plan’s back. You know what? Whatever it is you’re hoping to accomplish, you can keep it to yourself, but I’m officially heading this experiment.”  
  
“Why?” He looked wary of the prospect.  
  
“Because otherwise,” Tony explained, “you are clearly going to end up killing or maiming yourself. I don’t need that on me. I got my own problems.”  
  
Loki looked him over as he considered it. “And why should I trust you?”  
  
“I dunno,” Tony said. “Maybe because I’m the guy who’s already saved you twice today, ice queen.”  
  
The endearment seemed to turn Loki indignant and downright huffy, but still he conceded. “Very well,” he said. “The task is now yours to create a safe process for cooling my body until my skin freezes.”  
  
“‘Safe’,” Tony snorted, “doesn’t really feel applicable here. ‘Safest possible’, yeah maybe.”  
  
“I’m in your hands, Tony,” Loki consented, and he gave a slight bow— nothing much, just a slight dip of the head. However if he was honest, Tony was more distracted with how his name sounded when the other spoke it. Never before had his name— a nickname to his real one, at that— sounded so regal and important. It was kind of nice. Then Loki turned and walked away.  
  
“What,” Tony said, “you’re leaving me?”  
  
“Yes,” Loki replied, “I find you boring when you’re distracted.”  
  
“Oh, no,” Tony drawled sardonically, “my wounded pride.” He put a hand to his chest as though he had been struck.  
  
He caught the smile on Loki’s face, the slight grin that said nothing about manipulation, that spoke more on minor amusement. And he watched Loki ascend the stairs until his feet disappeared from view.  
  
When sure he was gone and there was no risk of his return, Tony spoke to the ceiling. “Jarvis.”  
  
“Yes, sir?” came the prompt reply.  
  
Tony sat at his desk and pulled up a screen. “Do a scan of the keypad. I want you to pull up all fingerprints.” A light ran down the small square beside the glass door. The results quickly popped up on the screen in front of him, dozens of them. “Get rid of mine, of course.” Most disappeared. “Pepper, Rhodey, uh— Coulson. All of them, gone.” They too faded from the display.  
  
“There are two differing sets of prints left,” Jarvis told him. The screen divided in half, shuffling each print against its matching set on one side or the other.  
  
“Two?” That was one more than expected.  
  
“One is identified from personnel files as Natalie Rushman.”  
  
“Oh,” Tony hummed, “that figures. Fury’s spy, the spy’s spy. Probably down here trying to check up on me. And now the other one.”  
  
“Unidentifiable.”  
  
“Label subject as ‘Loki’.”  
  
“Yes, sir.”  
  
“Crack however many databases you feel you have to for comparison,” Tony instructed.  
  
“Is there anywhere in particular you would like for me to start?” Jarvis asked.  
  
“I dunno,” Tony said. “Hit it off with MI6. From there, standard criminal records, and after that,” he hummed, “just have a ball.”  
  
Tony pulled the control panel from his large scanner and began feeding it wires from the multiple smaller ones he had been using to monitor his health when under the influence of palladium. It was more than twenty minutes before he heard a peep from Jarvis.  
  
“No match found for subject Loki.”  
  
“Well,” Tony said, looking up from his work, “that’s only so surprising. All right, off MI6, onto the rest. I’m surprised it took you so long. You in need of a tune-up?”  
  
“No, sir,” Jarvis stated. “That wasn’t only MI6. I scanned every database.”  
  
“Every…” Tony whistled, impressed. “Okay, I take it back. You are definitely in your prime of life.” He paused a minute, thinking. “So you went through everything? ‘Everything’ everything?”  
  
“MI6, criminal records, FBI, CIA, military, military reserves, retired mi—”  
  
“Yeah,” Tony said, waving his hand, “I get it. So he’s not in the system. Not unheard of, I guess. I just thought for sure that might have been some sort of codename. Who names a kid Loki? I mean,” he criticized, “Loki, really?” He stopped again, pondering his next action. “Didn’t get a last name.” He clicked his tongue as he thought. “What happens if you do a search for just the first one?”  
  
“Numerous articles on the Norse deity,” Jarvis informed him.  
  
“Like mythology?”  
  
“Yes, sir.”  
  
“That clenches it,” Tony decided. “Come on, those top secret people _love_ codenames based on mythologies. I just gotta figure out who he’s working for.”  
  
“If I may?” Jarvis spoke up.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Forgive me,” he quickly amended, seeming to think better of himself. “It isn’t my place.”  
  
“I know you’re a learning software,” Tony said, “but go ahead and can the humble changing your mind bit. What’ve you got?”  
  
“He was rather rude earlier,” Jarvis said, “calling me pointless.”  
  
“Parish the thought,” objected Tony, thoroughly offended on his behalf.  
  
“Which justifies my dissolving of his privacy in saying he also asked that I research a topic with further regard to Norse Mythology,” he disclosed.  
  
“Uh-huh.”  
  
“It seems relevant now,” Jarvis told him.  
  
“Yeah,” Tony scoffed, “or he’s some sort of Norse nut.”  
  
Jarvis then reminded him that, “He did say his father’s name was Odin.”  
  
“What’s your point?” Tony asked.  
  
“You could _try_ opening a book outside of your usual interests sometime, sir,” Jarvis lectured.  
  
Tony shrugged, saying, “Then you might really be pointless and I can’t have that on my conscience.” He pounded the table with his fist. “I won’t do it.”  
  
“A pleasure, as always, to be at your disposal.” Tony wasn’t sure where Jarvis had picked up a penchant for flattery and vanity, but there was a descent chance that it had come from him.  
  
“Attaboy.” He patted his computer screen rewardingly.  
  
“Recorded mythology lists Odin as father of Thor and Loki as well as king of the Aesir on Asgard, a separate world from our own.”  
  
“All right,” Tony muttered, nodding his head. “I’m picking up on this guy’s brand of crazy now. So when he says he’s an alien…”  
  
“He most likely believes himself to be from the fictional world of Asgard,” Jarvis answered.  
  
“And a god.”  
  
“Most likely.”  
  
“And arrogance explained, gotcha.” Tony tapped his fingers rhythmically against the tabletop. “Go forth, find me the interesting stuff. Upload it to my phone and I’ll peruse it later.”  
  
“Are you asking for a crash course in Norse Mythology?” Jarvis questioned.  
  
“Yes and no. Mostly no,” Tony said. “Give me what you got on Loki. Throw in the rest but only what’s necessary so I can get on this guy’s level. Know thy enemy.”  
  
One of Tony’s computer screens lit up, scrolling through webpages at an incredibly accelerated rate. “This certainly is a new stage of preparedness from you,” Jarvis commented.  
  
“What can I say?” he replied. “Being roommates with someone who thinks they fell from Heaven puts a certain priority on things.”  
  
“Consider it done,” Jarvis said. “Although—”  
  
“I know,” Tony said. He sighed as he thought the matter over. “It still doesn’t explain…” He scratched his chin. “What the hell he was doing in that storm or where it came from.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m already working on the next chapter. :)


	6. Okay, Spill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Geez. It’s been like over three months since I updated. My bad. This chapter wasn’t coming out like I wanted and I got discouraged very easily. Ready now. Still not my favorite. Next one should be more fun though. Maybe I should make the chapters shorter so it doesn’t take me so long. I have no idea how the word count on these got away from me.

Tony walked through the door and shed his jacket, tossing it on the couch as he passed. He hadn’t even taken the care to notice someone sitting there, not until a curt warning was uttered, telling him to watch where he threw his things the next time.

Looking again, it was quite obvious to see Loki reclining there and reading a book, and that alone was a surprise. Tony wasn’t aware he still had hard copies around the house.

The meeting with Fury had put him off his flow for the day, and it was only worsened by the appalling assessment he had left with: approved but not. For the rest of the evening at least, he no longer felt the inventor’s siren song to tinker in his workshop. Instead, it sounded like much more fun to sit and pester Loki, as the man had done with him earlier.

Tony picked up his jacket and took its place on the couch, a strategic half-cushion away from touching the man. Loki paid him no mind, not until Tony thoughtlessly took the book from him, read the cover, and handed it back.

“May I help you?” Loki questioned irritably, resting the book upon his lap.

“Nope,” Tony replied. He turned his head, looking straight and drumming a nonsensical beat against his knees. “I’m good.”

“Well, don’t you have something to be working on?” he urged, and Tony could tell that the implication hinged more upon facilitating Loki and his want for cooler skin than it did Tony’s mere amusement with a project.

“Not today,” Tony told him. “My mood’s all,” he made a nondescript hand gesture that conveyed precious little. “Give me ‘til tomorrow. Then I’ll start work making you so chill we put Captain America to shame.”

“Who?” Loki questioned, and the personal oddity of the statement was clearly written on his face.

Tony balked, finding it very peculiar that Loki wasn’t aware of the best media hailstorm since he was on the front page. Had the man been living in a cave? “How have you not seen him? He’s been plastered all over the news. Which,” he commented, “was really good timing for me. Everyone’s starting to forget about my little snafus. I have been outshined.”

“I’m sorry,” Loki stated, going back to his book, “I still have no idea of whom you’re speaking. But if he can help with our experiment, you should ask for his assistance.”

“Doubt it,” Tony scoffed. In his opinion, the contest would be neck and neck in determining who knew less about science between his freeloading alien and the guy his dad probably had to use conversational kid gloves with seventy years prior.

Tony leaned forward and grabbed his tablet off the coffee table. First he activated the opaque screens against the setting sun, and then he turned on the television. The wall lit up.

“Oh,” Loki chimed with intrigue. He sat his book down and leaned forward, watching the screens and the bustling people upon them.

“What’s the matter?” Tony quipped. “They not have these where you’re from?”

“No, I have one,” Loki said. “Tell me, whom are we spying on?”

“Uh.” Tony hit the buttons and began channel surfing. “Well, there’s Captain America,” he said as he landed on a news channel. It was a still image that had been taken from someone’s phone. Apparently when brawny attractive men went running into traffic and were surrounded by a squad of unmarked cars, people took notice. “But,” Tony droned as he began flipping through channels again, “that’s boring.”

It was a brief and fleeting time before Loki grew tired of Tony’s inability to keep the conduit in one place. He took the remote from him. Tony had every intention of explaining how it worked, but Loki really did seem to be a quick learner.

“I’m gonna get a drink,” Tony decided instead as he stood up. “Want anything?”

“You’re being hospitable?” Loki questioned with a short laugh.

“I can be. Do you want something or not?”

“Whatever you’re having.”

“Coming right up.”

Tony took his time, inspecting the reconstruction of his house as he went. The men Pepper had hired did good work. Ignoring the roped off area surrounding drying pools of cement, everything looked the same as it had. No doubt the bill would reflect as much.

When he returned, Loki seemed most interested in some juvenile children’s movie that involved a degree of the supernatural in its story.

“I thought your world was devoid of magic, but there’s a building in which inanimate objects come alive,” Loki explained to him, and he seemed certain that they were spying on the events as they transpired in real life.

“You jealous?” Tony asked as he sat down and handed Loki his drink.

“Hardly,” he boasted. “I could do that if I wanted. And,” he added with a huff, “if I had my abilities.”

“Well, enjoy,” Tony said as he took out his phone. “Try not to judge them too harshly.” If he was going to be unproductive, he reasoned that he might as well kill time with the newly assigned research on his couch mate.

Tony couldn’t have put a pin in the exact time he gave up reading the weird tales of yesteryear’s bored storytellers, but he was very aware that he had moved on to planning theoretical upgrades for the Mark VII some time prior. He didn’t even notice how late it had gotten until the television went blank.

“Bored already?” he asked, not looking up from the small schematics he was constructing.

“I would like a bath,” Loki told him as he stood with a groan. “Have my clothes laundered by the time I get out.”

He began walking away and Tony called his attention back with a whistle. “Yeah, your highness, I don’t do the laundry around here.”

“Then who does?” Loki questioned. “Where are your servants?”

Tony thought on that. There was the cleaning lady. But she only came in twice a week. Pepper used to get his dry cleaning done. Then Natalie did, or Agent Romanoff, whatever she called herself. “I don’t know,” he answered. “Clothes just magically reappear in my closet.”

“Unless mine does the same, I will insist that you clean these for me,” he ordered, pulling at the soft fabric of his shirt.

“Would you settle down boy?” Tony said as he stood up. “You can just borrow some of mine.” He looked Loki up and down. The man was thin and fairly tall, and though he definitely pulled the look of it off, it did not bode well when sharing a wardrobe. “Maybe something will work.”

The ‘something’ didn’t really work, and it was obvious when Loki held a pair of sweatpants up to his waist and they stopped a few inches before his legs did.

“New plan,” Tony spoke, throwing a t-shirt at him, “tomorrow I’ll have my assistant pick up some…” He trailed off, remembering again his state devoid of any help. “Scratch that. Wow, I can’t believe I lost two assistants in one month.”

“Can you do anything on your own?” Loki mocked.

“Sure I can ,” he said. “So… _new_ new plan. I’m thinking clothes shopping, bright and early.”

“If you insist,” Loki said, draping Tony’s clothes over his arm. “So long as we return in enough time to work on my request.”

“Yeah, yeah, no worries,” Tony assured him with a pat on the shoulder. “Now get out of my room.”

—

Seeing Loki walk into the den the next morning wearing his clothes was a laughable sight, to be sure. The worst was in the way the pants came up too high, showing off his pale, bony ankles. Other than that, if Tony had to admit it to himself, the rest was rather appealing, in that day-after sort of way. Years of late night company wearing his shirts had definitely conditioned him into thinking the look was pleasing.

“So,” Tony greeted over his cup of coffee, “I didn’t try tackling the washing machine last night. You good with wearing that out?” He tried not to laugh but had a feeling that he was still cracking a grin.

“I’d rather not,” Loki replied, “but seeing as how you are so very short in stature,” and there was the returned dig, “I imagine that all of your clothes will suit me similarly.”

The car ride was quiet until Tony turned his music on. Loki quickly turned it off, saying that it was not to his taste. Tony, not caring in the slightest, switched it back on. They continued back and forth, passive aggressively flicking the dial on and then off again, until Loki eventually grabbed the knob and broke it off before throwing it out of the car.

Tony sputtered for a moment, at a complete loss for words. “This is a vintage car!” he finally screamed. “Do you have any idea how hard that’s gonna be to replace, you lunatic?” The depths of Loki’s apathy in the matter were properly conveyed with a simple glance. If he were so childish— and that was probably the world’s smallest ‘if’— Tony would have destroyed something of his to get back at him, but all the guy had shown up with was literally the clothes on his back. Which they soon remedied.

The sales clerk looked legitimately offended when Loki walked in wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants. But Tony flashed his credit card, and that was all it ever took.

In his mind, picking out clothes for Loki had gone a little something like dressing up a giant Ken doll. But he seemed more than capable of selecting his own wardrobe and wanted none of Tony’s help. He even went so far as ridiculing Tony’s few suggestions when he tried. Therefore, the expectation had been for a mismatched rainbow to erupt from the dressing room. He was wrong.

Loki stepped out wearing a white dress shirt with a tie and all the accoutrements to match. Tony felt inadequate looking down at his own jeans and t-shirt. “Tony,” Loki called loudly, getting his attention, “pay the people.” Even when it sounded like he was being scolded, it was nice to hear his name in that proper accent.

After that, Loki allowed for no further dawdling. He had Tony carry his numerous bags of clothes to and from the car, unable to do so in his injured state, of course. Tony wasn’t sure how long Loki thought he was staying or why he needed so many outfits, but he also saw the sense that until one of them used— or even found— the washing machine, the recycling aspect of clothes was probably off the table. He made a note to ask Pepper who took care of that part of his life.

Tony felt almost like a hired idiot, for all that Loki hovered over him, barking orders and asking numerous questions while he worked. When yelled at to help instead of judge, the man then became _too_ helpful, and Tony found he couldn’t take that either.

It didn’t take long until he had to kick Loki out again.

Tony was researching Jarvis’s suggestions on therapeutic hypothermia— deeming it a good start but not enough— when the doorbell rang, once and then insistently.

“Jarvis, who’s at the door?” he asked, not looking up from a published research paper he was reading.

“Agent Coulson of SHIELD, sir.”

“What do you think would be more effective,” Tony questioned, pulling up the security camera for the front door, “telling him to go away or continuing to ignore him?”

“I don’t think he’ll accept either option.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Jarvis informed, “he’s overriding my security protocols and opening the door as we speak.”

“Hey!” Tony looked at his security feed and saw Coulson holding a device in one hand that connected to another pressed up against the door. “A little heads up next time?”

“If you leave now, you may be able to meet him before he gets inside,” Jarvis suggested.

“Yeah, I’m going,” Tony groaned, running up the stairs.

Loki, in all his typical helpfulness, was lying on the couch reading his book from the previous night.

“What’s the matter with you?” Tony shouted as he walked through. “Can’t even get up to open the door?”

“Is that what that was?” Loki asked passively, turning the page and making no effort to help.

Tony reached the door just as it opened, slipping the hand he had intended to grab the doorknob with through his hair. “Agent,” he greeted. “What an unpleasant surprise. To what do I owe the intrusion?”

“Mister Stark,” Coulson said with a nod of his head. “I’m sure it’s nothing, but I’ve been tasked with some quick inquiries regarding your activity a couple of nights ago.” He walked past Tony and into the house.

“I _just_ got rid of you,” Tony stated petulantly. “Can’t you go bother somebody else?”

He followed Coulson into the den and saw that his trained eyes had quickly set their sights on Loki. “Who’s this?” he asked, pointing.

“No good wandering vagrant,” Tony answered. “You said you had some questions for me?”

“I’d rather ask them in private.”

“You,” Tony called, snapping his fingers at Loki, “am-scray.”

“Make me,” came the inflexible reply.

“Well,” Tony sighed, “you heard him.”

Coulson approached the couch and knelt down beside Loki. “Listen,” he said, “I’m sure whatever arrangement you have with Stark is all well and good, but this is a matter of national security.” His light tone turned serious. “If you don’t get up, I will be forced to escort you from the room.”

Loki turned his head away from his book. He glared at Coulson, a cold sensation. “I don’t threaten so easily,” he said. “Tony.” Loki snapped his fingers, turning the gesture back on him. “Show our guest the balcony. You may have as much privacy as you wish out there.”

Tony wanted to question when Loki had gone from being a guest to ordering guests around, but he said nothing to him as he grabbed Coulson and angled him towards the outside. “Just,” he said, “don’t fight with him on this.”

“You keep some interesting company,” Coulson said as Tony closed the door behind them.

“Lately I feel like he keeps me,” Tony remarked with a huff. “Suddenly I’m a servant in my own house.” He brushed that train of thought along its tracks with a wave of his hand. “But that’s not the reason you’re here.”

“No, it’s not.”

“So,” Tony drawled impatiently, “shoot. I’ve got some work to get back to.”

Perfectly compliant and eager towards his own purpose, Coulson held up a folder marked with the SHIELD insignia. “Three nights ago there was a flash lightning storm in the desert one hundred and twenty miles northeast of here.”

“You don’t say,” Tony replied, portraying a decent disguise of indifference for someone who was about to walk into dangerous territory.

“And of course,” Coulson went on, “for SHIELD to be investigating this means that it wasn’t a typical storm.”

“Sure.”

The man could appear daunting when he wanted, and at that moment he had turned his judging, truth seeking gaze on Tony, watching him closely as he went on explaining. “It lasted one minute, struck an area ten feet in diameter, and then disappeared.”

“Fascinating.” As well as Coulson could put upon an air of intimidation, Tony could match him step for step in feigned apathy.

“And I tell you this—” He opened the folder he held, taking out several grainy photographs. “Because our satellites picked up images of what appears to be Iron Man fleeing the scene.” He flipped the pictures, showing each to Tony before lingering on one, which he then pointed to. “And carrying something.”

“Not me.”

The lie was obvious against the plethora of evidence, but Tony had learned early on in his life that denial went far, if for no other reason than to annoy.

“Could I convince you to rethink your answer?” Coulson asked, placing his photographs back inside their folder.

Tony thought on his reply. He had no reason to act in defense of his unwanted houseguest, but then he also had no reason to assist SHIELD and make their lives any easier. His was a choice of whom he took the greater pleasure of inconveniencing. And his approved but not approved assessment from SHIELD still stung his fragile ego. “No, you cannot.” Coulson could have made great strides in intelligence gathering from his stare alone. Had he been up against anyone else. “That it?”

“Unless you decide you want to cooperate,” Coulson said, dropping the folder to his side.

“It’d be a first,” Tony mused. “You know, why start the precedent now?”

Tony showed Coulson out. He knew it would not be the end of things, however. He knew his recalcitrance had just put him back under SHIELD surveillance. Perhaps he should walk around in his underwear— or less— to give them a proper show.

When the door was shut and the mental note made for stronger locks, Tony returned to the long couch and its lounging occupant. He cleared his throat in a demand for attention, which he was, thankful, given. “So I just lied to the government,” Tony stated. “Correction,” he chuckled, “I just lied _badly_ to the government, on your behalf, by the way. So here it is, buddy. Truth time.”

“What are you talking about?” Loki questioned, acting as though Tony was the crazy one. But he sat his book down and gave his full attention anyway.

Tony sat on the couch at Loki’s feet, looking at him with as stern an expression he could muster. “We’re dropping the act now, Mister Loki, god of mischief supreme, and you’re gonna tell me where you’re really from and what you’re doing here.”

Loki smirked with devilish intrigue. It was a creeping smile that honored the unworthy and gave reward. Finally Tony was deserving of his time. Loki sat up slowly, and never once did that pleased smile falter. “You know who I am.”

“Ish,” Tony said. “I know who you _think_ you are.”

“I don’t understand why you believe the two can’t be one and the same,” Loki remarked. In steady increments, his amusement did fall.

“Because gods don’t exist, okay?” Tony replied with exasperation. “You’re just a secretive, crazy guy who was in the desert messing around with stuff so big it got SHIELD’s attention. And now I want to know what it was.”

Loki contemplated his demand for a moment, more serious now. His levity, his delight, his admiration was gone. “And how good are you with secrecy?”

Tony’s voice droned on in a contemplative hum as he recalled how his secret identity hadn’t lasted a full day. “I can be,” he paused and cleared his throat before speaking more certainly. “Yeah, I can keep a secret.”

“So,” Loki sighed, “you’re horrible at it then?”

“Really depends on the subject, I think. And, of course, some people say my ego’s a factor,” Tony said with a grin.

“Well this doesn’t concern you,” Loki snapped. “We’re on me now.”

“I know,” Tony agreed. He brought his hands together in a quick clap. “So shoot. Tell me what freak weather experiments you’re a part of. ‘Cause I gotta be honest,” he snorted, “it’s, like, the one puzzle piece of a problem I just can’t jam in place to el cerebro de Loki.”

“Oh, that part wasn’t my doing,” he answered simply.

“I knew it,” Tony stated proudly. Loki was smart, of that Tony had no doubt (although he also had no evidence), but he also felt whatever peculiarity had gone on that night was beyond him. “So who was it? Are they a threat?”

“Most likely not,” Loki languidly replied, acting as though he no longer had interest in a conversation that wasn’t about him.

“And why’d they strand you out there?” Tony asked.

“It’s my punishment.”

“Okay,” Tony said with a nod, “now we’re getting somewhere. I think. What’d you do?”

“Nothing,” Loki innocently said. What cunning lie he spun was revealed not through a shameful aversion of the eyes, but through the arrogant line of sight he kept between them. He was good at deceit, boastful in his abilities. He preened at the exercise of skill, and his prideful display was what gave him away.

“C’mon,” Tony scoffed, patting the couch cushion between them. “Don’t lie to me now.”

“Why do you think I’m lying?” Loki asked, and he smiled but there was no genuineness to it. A forced façade, it was.

“Because it’s been my experience that people don’t usually get punished for no reason. Unless they’re the good guy versus evil. Quick assessment,” he hummed in thought, “you don’t strike me as the hero.”

“I could be a hero,” Loki bit back. He looked offended, but more so by Tony’s insistence than as to whether or not it was true.

Tony watched him with contemplation. He held up his hands and made a frame of his fingers, outlining Loki and studying him with a tilt of his head. “Nope,” he dismissed, “don’t see it. Why are you being punished?”

Loki looked utterly displeased with him, almost angry one could say. He had every right, in his own mind, to deny Tony an answer. He very much wanted to. But eventually he did shed his light on the subject, if slowly and after long pause. “I used my brother as a tool to spark a war,” he spoke softly and with little emotion to be heard. But the cause of his reticence could not have been shame, not from Loki.

Tony blinked dumbly, befuddled momentarily by the answer he had received. “Sorry,” he said, shaking his head to clear it of absurdities, “that was a lot to take in there. You wanna run that by me again? War with who?”

“Jotunheim.”

He paused before asking again, louder, “ _Who_?”

“I thought you knew who I was and where I’m from,” Loki moaned. “Or were you simply playing at being smart?”

“I… I know a little bit. But then I got distracted,” Tony said, sheepishly recalling his quickly abandoned research in favor of sleek designs. “I’m not usually one to take time out of my day for fiction and fairytales.”

“Fiction?” Loki questioned, and in that moment he was definitely offended, but not in the most likely of ways. It seemed less a blow to his ego and more a shock to his very existence. He put a hand to his chest as though he had been struck with an injury that took his breath.

“Yeah, like I said, I don’t actually believe all this,” he made a flitting hand movement, “mythology crap.”

“Fiction? Myth?” Loki repeated, and still he looked insulted. “Do you think I’m not real?”

“No, I know you’re real,” Tony told him. “But Loki isn’t. That’s what I’m saying.”

Long fingers wrapped around Tony’s wrist and gripped tight. With no gentle effort they pulled his resisting hand up and pressed it to Loki’s chest. “Do you feel that?” he asked, and he pushed Tony’s curled fingers harder against himself.

“Uh,” Tony muttered, then cleared his throat. “Yeah.”

With his free hand Loki tilted Tony’s gaze to him, looking him in the eye when he said, “I am Loki and I _am_ real.”

There was no indication to the past tell of egotism that had existed in Loki’s last lie. Therefore Tony could only believe that he had adapted to that detection or honestly thought his tale to be truth.

They sat in stillness for a moment, looking at one another, for Loki had not abandoned his hold on Tony’s face and would not drop his own eyes either.

Tony moved his hand in Loki’s grasp and patted at his chest two quick times. “Okay.”

“You believe me then?” Loki asked. His expression could not have been named ‘happy’, but there was some sort of relief to be seen. He pulled away his hand from Tony’s face.

“I’m ready to believe,” Tony sighed, “that you think it’s true.”

“No, that’s not good enough,” Loki argued. “I want your word that you trust in what I tell you. Otherwise, there’s no point in wasting my breath.”

He spent a couple of seconds to buy his words a measure of credulity, then Tony nodded his head. “Okay. You’re Loki.”

“Good.” At last Loki released the hold upon his wrist, and Tony retook dominion of his own hand, pulling it from the other’s flat chest. “Now we may truly converse.”

Loki told him much on the relevant subjects of gods and their world and everything that would make a decent story for someone young and impressionable. To those topics, Tony lent only half his attention. And when Loki reached more recent topics, Tony could see the lies and omissions. Some explanations were too vague, others housed far too many details. It was clear even to him that Loki was painting himself the victim in any small way he could. So Tony called him out on it, making Loki admit to his doings as they happened. What version of the truth he heard was unclear, but he felt it was a closer one than Loki had intended.

“So,” Tony clarified, “you let these, uh, giant guys in to make a mess and run around?”

“Oh, that was just for a bit of fun really,” Loki defended, but he could not hide the mischief in his smile. “I never expected such a disastrous result.”

“For you anyway,” Tony insisted.

“Yes,” Loki muttered, “for me.” He looked so falsely innocent when he said, “I only wanted to ruin my brother’s big day.”

“And the lightning storm,” Tony prompted, “the thing Coulson’s harassing me over?”

“We call it the Bifrost,” Loki explained, “a bridge used to travel between worlds.”

“Neat,” he remarked. “Or the idea of it is anyway.” To Tony, the matter was but theory and science-fiction. But he would have been lying to say he didn’t have schematics and notes for something along the lines of a portal, something dreamed when childish nostalgia for other worlds was at its closest. “Something worth checking out.”

“If you ever get the chance,” Loki huffed. “The Allfather has left me here, and I…” He stopped short. Turning in his seat, the man began talking to himself, completely dismissing Tony’s presence. “Well, I suppose I could. Perhaps they would still work without my magic.”

“What would work?” Tony asked, but so caught up in his own thoughts was Loki that he did not register his question until Tony had asked it a second time, and louder.

“Have you a map?” he asked.

“Sure,” Tony said, “map of what?” He reached over and pulled the coffee table closer. After tapping a couple of buttons, it began emitting a faint blue glow while he waited for further instruction.

“The Earth,” Loki told him, “all of it.”

“Dream big, huh?”

He complied to the mad man’s wishes, though, pulling up a generated display of the world above the table.

“There.” Loki pointed to a section. “Can you make it bigger?”

Tony placed his hands together and pulled them apart, zooming in on the indicated area.

“There are portals between each world,” Loki explained, speaking to Tony almost as an afterthought. “I know of a few between here and Asgard. Some can be utilized by simply walking through them, but a greater number— most— require an intense velocity of speed when passing through.”

“Gun it up to eighty-eight, right?” Tony quipped.

“I’m sorry?” Loki questioned queerly.

“It’s a… never mind.” The explanation and the amount of time it would take were hardly worth the payoff.

Loki sat on the edge of the couch and toyed with the map. Following Tony’s example, but in reverse, he zoomed back out and observed the layout once more. He spun the map and tapped it, magnifying sections at his leisure. Tony was impressed by the learning curve in him.

“What’s the plan here?” Tony asked him after a moment.

“Pardon?”

“Even if you get to the castle in the sky, what’s to stop them from sending you right back?”

Loki did not look up from his task, barely giving Tony any attention when he answered. “I seek only to plead my case, and that I cannot do from here.” He studied the map with new intent and zoomed in one last time before pointing. “Here’s a good one.”

Tony observed the location and rolled his eyes. “The Bermuda Triangle,” he criticized. “How original.”

“You know of it?” Loki questioned with an approving hum.

“Yeah,” Tony snorted, “who doesn’t? Boats, planes, other… things are supposed to disappear there all the time. But it’s nothing, weird superstition.” He waved his hand to dismiss the eccentric notion of legitimate paranormal activity. “They sink or they crash, that’s it. The location… it’s coincidence.”

“They fail,” Loki said, “because they are too large for the portal. Only parts of the vessel are transported. The remainder flounders and falls. But if it should be approached in a smaller craft,” he contemplated, “I believe success could be assured.”

“You believe?” Tony adversely questioned.

“I’m almost certain,” he replied.

“How big of a ride are you talking about?”

“For this gateway,” Loki thought, looking to the map, though it held no answers to interdimensional travel, “nothing wider than a few feet.”

“And what’s the visibility of this… portal like?” Tony asked, wondering if the other saw something on the map that he didn’t.

“They can’t be seen,” Loki said. “It took me many years to sense them. To my knowledge, I am the only one that can.”

“What are you,” Tony chuckled, “the chosen one?”

“No,” he smiled, “I’m the ambitious one.”

“Even better.”

For another minute Loki took no notice of him, so busy was he in studying a map that revealed nothing to his plot. “Yes, I think this could work,” he finally allowed himself to hope, “so long as it can be accessed without magic. I’ve never been without before.”

“Great,” Tony said, exhaling deeply. “So… one last question. Our experiment, what’s it about?” Beside him Loki went stiff. “I think you may have glossed over that part.”

“It’s nothing,” the man stated, “my own nightmares getting the better of me.” His tone was flighty and irregular, as though indifference to the subject were his utmost priority and he was failing. “I’m sure there’s nothing to it. I was… mistaken.”

“So,” Tony drawled, “orders, captain?”

“Abandon the project,” Loki instructed.

“You sure?” he asked to make certain. There was already a decent amount of research floating around inside his head. “‘Cause I’ve already—”

“ _I said to drop it_!” Loki screamed, fury and his own self-doubt erupting.

Tony recoiled at the cry, ringing out in the quiet room like a gunshot, a sound so utterly unexpected from the man who was normally so composed and restrained.

“I’m sorry,” Loki muttered, seeming caught off guard by his own outburst. He ran a weak and trembling hand down his face. “I… my apologies. But it’s nothing, you see. It’s nothing.” In that moment, Tony wasn’t sure which of them he was trying to convince, but if it was him, Loki was doing a bad job. “If I may but return home, I can ask the Allfather himself and confirm as much. So your services are no longer needed.”

“Fair enough,” Tony hesitantly spoke, once more questioning the stability of his freeloading madman. “You won’t see me complaining about _not_ having to do something.”

Either because he was uncomfortable after his outburst or because they had simply spent too much time together that day, Loki decided to dismiss himself. He stood with a whimpering moan and put a firm hand to his injured chest. However, something looked a little off about it.

“Hold it,” Tony called, and Loki stopped mid-step. “Back up.”

“What?” he asked, turning back around.

“This whole time,” Tony said, standing up and encroaching upon his space, “you’ve been complaining about your left side hurting.” He looked at Loki’s chest and the other’s gaze followed him down. “Did your broken ribs decide to, what, hop over and give you a break?” Giving up his ruse, Loki dropped his hand completely. “You lied to me.”

“Oh, don’t act so insulted,” Loki scoffed. “I’m still injured.” He pulled his shirt from where it had been nicely tucked in the waist of his pants. There was a long, dark bruise on him, splotchy, ugly on his pale skin, and roughly about the size of the Iron Man helmet. He threw his shirt back down angrily. “But it wasn’t enough to ensure your cooperation.”

“How did you even get the hospital to play along?” Tony asked dumbly.

Loki took a deep breath and sighed with a mocking grin. “Think of them more as pawns than players,” he said. “After I awoke and after I determined what had happened to me, I switched out my results for someone else’s. I thought it was the best way to guilt or,” he paused, trying to remember Tony’s term, “‘blackmail’ myself a place of temporary residence.”

“You snuck out,” Tony clarified, “and you switched your x-ray with someone else’s?”

“It seems most places can be predicted to have a slack watch at such early hours,” Loki commented with a light chuckle. “To avoid being seen was an easy task.”

“And in the mean time,” Tony argued, “some guy’s walking around with broken ribs and a misdiagnosis.”

Loki groaned at his bleeding heart mentality. “If he’s in enough pain he will get a second opinion.”

“That is… deplorable,” he declared.

“As is the idea that if my assault hadn’t been incriminating enough, you’d have left me there,” Loki countered, turning judgments back upon him step for step.

Laughing, Tony shook his head and said, “Well aren’t we a pair.”

“A pair of what?” Loki questioned.

“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “Pick whatever you want.”

“At least I don’t have to keep that annoying act up anymore,” Loki sighed. And he leaned back with his hands on his hips, stretching in a way that made the simple action look new and unique, like a breath of fresh air.

“Hey,” Tony said with a snap of his fingers, “shouldn’t I be able to drop the whole host act now too?”

“I’m here now,” Loki arrogantly stated. “Good luck removing me.”

“I don’t need luck,” Tony said, rejecting the notion that he needed to rely on anything so trivial. “I’ve got a suit of armor that could kick your scrawny ass out no problem.”

Loki stood tall above him and crossed his arms, staring him down. Tony did not consider himself particularly intimidated by the act, but he was adverse to the challenge it presented. And life was easier without challenges, so after a moment he folded.

“But I guess as long as you stay out of my way,” he cleared his throat, “you’re not really worth the trouble it would take.”

“A wonderful decision.” He grinned at him as his way of approval, and once more Tony felt as though he was the guest imposing upon Loki.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, Tony still doesn’t believe Loki about his origin. He was mostly just humoring him to get him talking.
> 
> I don’t really like the name of this fic. It was more a placeholder than anything. I’ve been thinking about maybe changing it. But I still don’t have any other ideas. lol.


	7. While You Were Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now your Asgard update. Sorry, no Tony/Loki this chapter. I had planned for one with them, but this seemed a little more important to slip in and include.
> 
> I have a fulltime job now, so updating will become an issue (not that it hasn’t already due to my own laziness). I am going to try and write every other weekend, using the one in between for drawing. So… if I can keep to such a schedule things shouldn’t be too bad. I currently estimate there will be about twelve chapters. Over halfway done. I WILL finish this fic.

Frigga ran through the many halls. Her shoes made a fierce clacking in the echoing caverns of grandeur. Her skirts she held up above her ankles for an unimpeded stride. The hardened shell of queenly elegance broke apart with each step, falling away to reveal the raw torment of a mother.

She opened doors with a barging warrior’s strength. Across the long, oval room Odin stood upon his pointed balcony, a dark silhouette against the setting sun, orange and bright in its grasping struggle to hold the sky.

“How could you have done this?” she demanded, and her question was not one of a rhetorical nature. Within her heart she could not grasp understanding of such a punishment. She would have explanation for its severity.

“Do you understand what he has set in motion?” Odin bellowed at her. “He’s taken us to the brink of war!”

“But banishment?” Frigga questioned, a shrieking cry of emotion. “You would lose him forever?” She had always considered herself as one of strength, in body, in mind, but there were some pains that the heart could never be trained to resist. The decree slashed at her as a merciless evil, undoing her, ripping all identity save the emotions of sorrow and anger. “He’s our son!”

“What would you have done?” he asked of her, and for all his stubborn might, it did seem a sincere request for counsel, too late to be acted upon.

“I would not have exiled him to a world of mortals,” Frigga sobbed, a heaving croak of disdain and disgust toward the sentence. “Stripped of his powers to suffer alone. I would not have the heart,” she whispered. For her gentle Loki there had always been the sensation of difference within, that he did not belong. She had kept from him the reason, for her heart could not bear to see his harbored feelings justified. It was for that alone she agreed to Odin’s demand for secrecy. But she did not leave him to listless suffering. Frigga had taught him the workings of magic, and in that her boy had found purpose and happiness. Without it, she could not imagine the grief that Loki now possessed, though he would never claim his mourning.

Odin regarded her sadness. Perhaps he knew the true depths and reasons for it. “That is why I am king,” he said, for to his credit sentiment rarely influenced his decisions. “I, too, grieve,” he yelled, “Loki’s loss.” And though said in anger, there was genuine suffering in him. He wore it openly before her, as he could with no other. When he spoke again his regret was an apparent and heavy thing that weighed on him like a mountain of rubble. “But some things even I cannot undo.”

“You can bring him back,” Frigga pleaded, forlornly asking with hope that abandoned as she said it.

“No!” Odin denied her, firm and forceful. Then his great presence shrank back and he became hers once more. “For you,” he said, voice dipping quiet and low with eyes that followed to the floor as if in shame, “I would. But for the good of Asgard,” he looked to her, trying to press rationality, “it is a judgment that cannot be reversed. Power is not without sacrifice, and to keep a traitor in our house would welcome the people’s uncertainty, their doubt of our rule and reason.” He shook his head. “I cannot risk absent loyalty, not upon the knife’s edge of war.”

“He could not bring such harm,” she said, refuting the assertion.

“He already has,” Odin argued, but even that seemed like it took much strength and gave years of age to admit. “Long did I worry that we would come here.”

“No,” Frigga said, shaking her head with vehement denial, “do not say such a thing.”

“Loki is a Frost Giant,” he reminded her, as though it needed to be reminded, “and into Asgard he welcomed his kind. If still he does not know his heritage,” he sighed, “then it is his base instinct come to life. I fear that a thousand years did nothing to spare him from what he is, from that mindless hate.”

“You’re wrong,” she said. “He is our son. That’s all he is to me, all he will ever be.” 

“Then I am sorry,” he said, “to have banished your son. And to you I bare my envy, because it is not within my role to see only one side as you may do.”

“I know,” Frigga admitted, and she did see herself as fortunate to have choice in turning a blind eye. “But I cannot accept your apologies, not until he is returned.”

“Loki does not belong here,” Odin stated, a cheerless understanding of fact, “nor is there a place for him among the Frost Giants. Instead I set my hopes that he may find purpose in Midgard, though he be bereft of magic and his more treacherous mischiefs. His fate is in his own hands now.”

He walked away from her with his deep crimson cape flowing behind like a curtain in the wind. No more than ten steps had he taken, however, when he fell down upon his knees with a groan.

Frigga was at his side immediately, kneeling by him. “You are weak,” she whispered. “You cannot do this.” She ran gentle hands over his weary face and he leaned into the hold.

“I have no choice,” he spoke, quiet and tired. “My prospects betray and disobey me.”

“You can put this off no longer,” Frigga told him. “Release Thor.”

“Lesser may have been his crimes,” Odin said, “but neither can they be ignored. An ill rest would find me to know that I may awake in the middle of battle, with these walls falling around me, if not those of Jotunheim.”

“No,” she shook her head, “he wouldn’t.”

Odin pushed her away with a sweep of his arm. “Away,” he said, rising to his feet. 

It was not with grace that he left .

—

The room was dim, lit only by hushed sparks from a low fire. Its glowing warmth glinted across the many angled platforms and decorations of gold, giving the illusion of more light than there was. The air was quiet and oppressive, subdued with the stillness of a wake.

“We should never have let him go,” Volstagg spoke, watching the dark liquid in his cup.

“There was no stopping him,” Sif said, aware of Thor’s stubbornness.

“At least he’s only imprisoned,” Fandral said, looking for some brighter angle. “Which is more than we know of Loki’s fate.”

“Do not speak of Loki,” Sif ordered, her voice cool and on the brink of anger.

“Oh, come now,” Fandral objected. “You don’t honestly believe the word of some guard about what happened, do you? Loki is our,” he stopped short and grimaced, “well, he’s our friend’s brother. We’ve known the little scamp too long to write him off so quickly.”

“It would be a step too far,” Volstagg agreed, and he hissed as Hogun applied some ointment to his arm. It burned as harshly as the original bite of cold. “Even for Loki.”

“Laufey said,” Hogun spoke, his voice a quiet murmur that held an underlying solemnity, “there were traitors in the House of Odin. A master of magic could bring three Jotuns into Asgard.”

“It supports what the guard said happened after we left,” Sif remarked.

“‘The guard said.’ ‘Laufey said,’” Fandral laughed. “We believe the word of Frost Giants now?” He shook his head. “Loki’s always been one for mischief, but you’re talking about something else entirely.”

“Bury your head in the dirt,” Sif spat at him, “but the king would not have banished him without reason.”

“I don’t say he’s innocent,” Fandral defended of himself, sitting up straight, “but it is nice to afford him the benefit of doubt, wouldn’t you agree? These are fairly serious allegations.”

Accusations thrown, grievances voiced, they had not many other things to discuss. Theirs was a role that felt impotent, unable to act against the higher powers without one in their corner. 

“Perhaps,” Volstagg stated, “when Thor is released—”

“Whenever that should be,” Sif interrupted. The terms of his imprisonment were vague, and no visitor was allowed to his cell.

Sif opened her mouth for a call to end stagnation when the large doors opened wide. A guard stood on either side, and there was brief certainty that the part they played in assistance to Thor had not been forgotten. Then the queen stepped through. She appeared frantic, but in a regal way, so subdued as to almost not be noticed.

“My queen,” Sif greeted, and they dropped to one knee in reverence. 

“Rise,” Frigga ordered, and they did so. To the Warriors Three and Lady Sif she confided, “I fear my worries have come to pass.”

—

Tucked away as though to be forgotten, Thor sat within his cell. It was a smaller enclosure, forced into a corner away from the more disreputable of criminals, but it shone still with the beauty and cleanliness of Asgard. 

Long ago— Hours? A day or more?— had he given up beating upon the golden walls that contained but did not hide. There had been a seat for comfort, but in his anger he had thrown it at the wall and torn apart what remained. He sat now upon the floor.

His thoughts were to his own unhappiness, but occasionally they turned to the misfortune of his brother. That their father had acted so strongly against them both displayed madness. Thor would not believe that Loki was capable of such betrayal. And to be banished for it was a cruelty to witness.

He would make the Jotuns pay for this blight upon his family.

Footsteps began to sound through the wide hall. At first, he thought they belonged to the bringer of his evening meal— that he refused to eat. But as they came closer, they sounded numerous, like so many raindrops beating hard upon a roof. Then the figures turned the corner and he saw his friends.

“Hogun,” he exclaimed, standing up to approach the wall between them, “Fandral, Volstagg, Sif. What are you doing here?”

“We bring news,” Fandral said, then he pulled forward the guard that had trailed them and pushed the man towards the cell. “Well, go on. Let him out.”

The guard brought his strange key to a mark on the corner column and golden walls fell down.

“Does my father see reason?” Thor asked, stepping from his cell.

“Your father sees little,” Sif informed him. “He has fallen to the Odinsleep, and not of his choosing. Your mother fears for him. She will not leave his side.”

Thor nodded his head, thinking himself a noble display, though he feared uncertainty and worry might have won him. “I see,” he said. “And what of the kingdom?”

A guard brought himself around the corner. In his hands lay the offered Gungnir, staff of Odin. Sif took it from him and held it to Thor with head bowed.

“My king,” she said.

“Oh, I thought you said I could give it to him,” Fandral bickered, sounding childish in his betrayal.

Thor reached out and took the staff. His friends kneeled before him, as did the guards. 

“We await your orders,” Sif spoke, and the others agreed with her deference. 

Thor held the staff in his hands. It felt heavy with the burden of rule, with the responsibility his father had spoken of. Though its weight was something easy to be managed, he felt he could drop it at any moment, unable to give all that it asked for.

“Thor?”

He placed it at his side. The base beat a loud thud that echoed through the cells. Holding it at his side he felt right. In everything he did that followed, he felt worthy.

“Prepare for war.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And then Thor became the villain of the fic. Oops. Perhaps I should say to put any minds at ease: I do not ever take part in character bashing. If you like Thor (as I do) this will not be a butchering plot to read. He will, however, be in the same mindset he is at the beginning of the movie. So… arrogant and a bit childish, but not really evil.
> 
> There’s a deleted scene where Frigga yells at Odin for banishing Thor. And I’ve just always thought, “Geez. How bad would it have been if it was Loki?”


	8. Another Sunny Honeymoon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was thinking about the last chapter I wrote that all took place in Asgard. I think I’m going to split each of the three parts up as teeny tiny chapters and insert them between the Tony/Loki ones. There will be a more obvious difference in the length of them, but I think the fic as a whole will flow better. So if you see this fic suddenly jump in chapter numbers, that’s why. Please ignore. Though I am still trying to figure out how I can do that without messing up everything.
> 
> Really gonna try and keep to my once every two week update schedule. This one is late though because of work. Boo.
> 
> EDIT: This chapter now has art. That I drew. :)

Tony’s lab was on lockdown. Regardless of who they were or what codes they knew, Jarvis was under orders to let no one but him enter. Hopefully it would keep Loki out, but at the same time he rather doubted it would.

A few more rooms needed to be locked, chief among them his bedroom. However, he still had an overnight bag to throw together, so that one at least would need to wait until right before he ran out the door.

“Socks, underwear, suit,” Tony listed off to himself, mumbling the long memorized necessities as he tossed them on his bed or dragged them from the closet. In his life he had traveled far and wide, even owning houses in many of the places. Packing had become his second nature. Often times he could feel like a nomad, bouncing from houses to hotels.

“What are you doing?”

Tony’s shoulders tensed to hear that silken voice in its haughty accent. Loki would have considered it an insult had he been called genuinely curious. Indeed it sounded as though he put a great deal of effort into keeping his simple question as a passive inquiry. That alone was ironic.

“Packing.”

The answer was unsatisfactory, to say the least. Loki walked the room with languid steps, looking at each article Tony folded. “Obviously,” he said, and he leaned down so slightly to Tony’s level, staring at his profile. Short black hair fell beside his face, obeying the downward call of gravity. “What I really meant was why.”

“Going to Washington,” Tony answered. He searched for his suddenly absent tie, certain he had only just had it. “I am–” Looking over he saw Loki holding the purple striped tie. He seemed taken with its softness, rubbing it against his cheek. “Give me that!” Tony demanded, jerking it from him. “I am being awarded a–”

“You are aware how ugly that is, aren’t you?” Loki remarked, gesturing to the tie. “Soft and smooth, to be certain, but overall rather juvenile to look at.”

“I guess you would go with a puffed up ascot, huh?” Tony quipped. He gently folded the tie and zipped it up in a case, placing it with his luggage.

“Adults wear neutral colors, Tony,” he lectured.

“It’s a very expensive tie,” Tony said, as though that fact undid the mocking judgment. “And you know what? Don’t even get me started on how boring things like black ties and adults are. I have been to plenty of black tie events in my life, thanks.”

“Say what you will,” Loki spoke, sitting on the edge of the bed, “but I prefer a nice gray. If people are looking at my tie, then they’re not looking at my face, you see?”

“Isn’t pointing out your own good looks supposed to be one of those social taboo things?” Tony said.

“Why?” Loki asked. “Should I not be proud of it, arrogantly conceited? It is a pretty face. Do you not agree?”

Tony looked at him for five unending seconds. Then he went back to packing without a word. Loki allowed the silence to pass with nothing more than a grin. And when that amusement wore off, he saw fit to unfold the clothing Tony had placed beside him, examining them.

“You give such short notice,” Loki said after a moment. “Do we leave tonight?”

“No, no, no,” Tony objected. He grabbed one of his t-shirts from Loki’s investigating fingers as they trailed over the stamped lines of a logo. “No ‘we’. Just me. You stay, Tony go.”

“You trust me here alone?” Loki asked with a smirk. There seemed to be a great mischief already at work in him. Fire blazed and priceless artifacts were destroyed. “But that would be so boring.”

“What,” Tony said, “you want a babysitter? SHIELD would probably love to have you for a day. I’ll drop you off at daycare.”

“I didn’t like that man,” Loki said, and in all fairness, their first impression had not gone well in either direction. “But I’m not staying here. This house is boring enough even when you’re in it. Have a servant pack my back for Washington.” He thought for a second. “Where is Washington?”

“It’s the ‘D.C.’ one,” Tony said, “so other side of the country. Should give me a nice break.” He pressed his suitcase down and zipped it closed. “Not that these last three days haven’t been magical.” He dropped his luggage on the floor and extended his hand to shake. “See you tomorrow,” he said as goodbye. “Food in the kitchen. TV in the den.”

“I’m not staying,” Loki told him, and he knocked Tony’s hand away.

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I am not.”

“In that case I cannot wait to see how you stow away,” Tony said. “‘Cause there’s only one car headed for the airfield and you are not gonna be in it.”

—

According to Loki’s unasked for assessment, the airplane was dull and uninspiring, but overall probably decent enough to fly. He found the view nice enough, watching the clouds roll across the land so distant. He sipped his glass of champagne with absolute class, and Tony found he could not consider the expensive brand as wasted on him.

“Why do we go to Washington?” he asked. The orange light of dusk covered his sharp features. He stared into the sun and would not deny its challenge upon his eyes only to lose the view it gave.

“Ceremony,” Tony said, “shouldn’t take more than an hour or two, factoring in all the boring small talk after.”

“What is the event for?” He tasted his drink, still not looking at Tony. Perhaps he was distracted by the scene outside, but it seemed more that the man simply wasn’t worth the effort it took to turn his head.

Tony shrugged with false modesty. “Nothing much,” he said. “I just saved hundreds of lives last week, possibly the world. Now I’m getting a medal for it. No big deal.” He waited for Loki to question him with intrigue, to shower him with praise. In reality, there came only a brief flitter in his eyes saying he might have been marginally impressed, but it was quickly gone.

“I’m sure you’re a great warrior,” Loki said, still so indifferent.

“I can tussle,” Tony told him. “Honestly,” he leaned a little closer as if they conspired and used delicate secrets, “the best part is I pulled some strings to get a special presenter.”

“Congratulations.” His praise was no more than sarcasm.

Tony smirked, unable to stop himself. “He’s gonna hate it.” The little chuckle in his throat at last made Loki turn his way. He looked positively confused.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“The guy,” Tony smiled, “can’t stand me. Hates me, as a matter of fact, totally and completely.”

“Are you making him do this to humiliate him?” he questioned through a paper thin mask of society’s obligatory offense.

“Yep.”

Loki chuckled once, quickly, unable to stop himself. But then he did it again several more times, too amused to cease. He covered his mouth with a graceful hand, but the quiet laughter still escaped beneath its locking gate. “You’re incorrigible,” he said between stilted snickering.

Tony grinned, for he was so entertained to see the other at a loss with mirth. “You love it.”

Laughter stopped. Loki was quiet in an instant, as though he had always had control. Or maybe the wrong thing said gave it back to him. He looked out the window again and he was solemn.

The silence in the cabin returned anew and without mercy. It was almost oppressive. Tony got up to order their dinner simply for something to do.

When he came back, Loki was still staring out the window, though the sun was gone and they flew over barren land with no lights. “You know,” Tony awkwardly began, “‘love’ is just a word we throw around a lot here. I think it’s just about lost all meaning except for in romance movies.” Loki looked at him briefly, then nodded his head and turned away again.

Tony heaved a big sighing breath and sat down. He knew if something wasn’t said soon he would fill the void, babbling about absolutely nothing of importance. Yet it was something he could not stop. “So–”

“What is that?” Loki asked, jumping on the landmine of speech. He eyes remained on the window, motionless as a statue and unblinking.

“What is what?”

“In your chest,” he clarified. “I’m slowly noticing that it actually isn’t a common accessory for you humans.”

Tony leaned back in his seat and tapped the arc reactor with his fingertip. It made a muted clink. “One and only.”

Loki glanced at him again, taken by indulgent intrigue. “Does it have a purpose?” he asked. And though the soft light could not reach through distance and cloth, it was as though his eyes lit up with the blue glow.

“Keeps me alive,” Tony told him. “There was a, uh, incident I guess. Every second of my life there’s shrapnel in me, trying to get at my heart.” He unbuttoned his shirt bit by bit, showing off his genius. “This keeps it out. Well,” he quibbled, “it powers the thing that does.”

Loki leaned forward with his hand outstretched, but he quickly reconsidered and pulled back, curling each finger against his palm.

“Go ahead,” Tony consented.

In all honesty it terrified him. Loki was a stranger, most likely insane. His true purpose was veiled, his motives vague. If ever there was cause to consider someone a threat, the moment was then and he was it. Letting Loki at his lifeline was chaotically destructive. Tony should have stopped, concealed, hidden.

Loki touched.

First one finger pressed against Tony– just its tip– then the rest followed. “It’s… mesmerizing,” Loki said, and he seemed at a loss for many other words. “It hums.”

“Cycling energy,” Tony said, “round and round it goes. Where it stops… I’m hopefully long dead and won’t have to worry.”

Loki went on fondling the arc reactor with a scientist’s curiosity. Time dragged on for so long their food arrived.

Tony cleared his throat to win the other’s attention. Loki sat upright. “See a pretty object and zone out?” he taunted as he buttoned his shirt. “What are you, a magpie?”

They ate mostly in silence. Occasionally the pilot would announce what area of land they were over. Tony would summarize the generalities of each for Loki.

It was late when they made it to the hotel, and while the drive in the rental car woke Tony up, it only seemed to lull Loki. Though he did become rather irritable when Tony put the top down to let the night air “wake him up.” They almost swerved into traffic when Loki hit him.

—

Tony knocked. Then he looked at his watch and knocked again. It was not in his usual way of life to factor in that someone could possibly run more late than he did. He was certain he had told Loki what time they were to leave. Once more he knocked.

The door opened and the accommodating figure behind it was a mess. Loki looked rushed. He wore only his undershirt and pants. His hair was a disaster.

“Forgive me my tardiness,” he said, and he sounded out of breath as if he had been running around, collecting odds and ends as he readied himself. “I thought all baths would be the same. I had to relearn the entire thing.” He left Tony in the open door and disappeared into the bathroom. “And then this thing.” A hairdryer came flying out and landed on the carpet. Tony was fairly certain it had originally been wired to the wall. “But do sit,” he insisted. “I shouldn’t be long.” He was so obliging that one might think his cynical attitude was a facet he had to put conscious thought into, and at that moment it was not the right time to stretch himself thin.

Tony sat on the edge of the bed, already made despite the fact room service had not run yet. “Did you make your bed?” Tony asked. He bounced a little to the sound of whining springs.

“Yes,” Loki said, and he stuck his head out to make sure they were talking about the same thing, “it’s habit.”

“I thought,” Tony sighed and rolled his eyes before saying, “‘princes’ had that sort of thing done for them.”

“Usually they do,” Loki answered, “but I prefer my privacy. At home, no one is allowed in my chambers.”

“Yeah, I get that.” Cleaning staff came in and out of his bedroom, but Tony’s real fortress of solitude was his workshop. That had a very limited guest list.

He leaned over to peek and check how the other’s progress faired. Loki stood in front of the mirror brushing back his hair, compelling it to lie flat.

“Don’t…” Tony extended a staying hand, but his fingers bent back in. He could not stop cringing, but he was also hesitant to step in and counsel. After a second, he threw caution to the wind and stepped into the bathroom. “Can I give you a piece of advice? And this is coming from a place of divine wisdom ‘cause look at me.” He pointed to his own head and turned it back and forth to show off every angle.

“What is it?” Loki asked with a sigh.

Tony put his hand on the brush and with a little resistance and a fight, won it from Loki. “Don’t go straight back,” he wisely advised. “You look like a cheesy villain from an old spy film.” He held up the brush with a promise of mercy. “Can I just…?” Slowly, very slowly, Loki nodded his consent.

He brushed black hair over, parting it nicely in the middle. Loki was a rather tall guy, however, and at one point Tony put a hand on his shoulder and forced him to lean down some. Then he swept his hair back on the sides, just enough to make it feather out.

Tony took a step back and appraised his creation. “Yep,” he said with a nod of his head. “That’s it. I swear, it has been bugging me for days.”

Loki looked at himself in the mirror. He twisted back and forth to see the sides. He tilted his head up then down. It was obvious he wanted to say something cruel or redo his hair out of spite. However, all he said was, “I suppose it could be worse.” And he allowed it.

“Just think of me as your fairy godmother,” Tony said, “making you presentable for the ball.”

Loki chuckled once, slightly mocking. “And you say _I_  speak in riddles.”

“It’s a good look for you,” Tony said as he tossed the brush on the counter. “Little less world domination, not so menacing. Knocked a few years off too, so you’re welcome.”

“Age doesn’t often concern me,” Loki told him, and he did seem indifferent to the concept, old soul in a young body and all that.

“And how old are you exactly?” Tony asked, looking him over from toe to tip, focusing especially on his face. “I mean, I’ve never been very good at guessing this sort of thing, but you, big fella, are even more of an enigma to place than usual.”

“How old am I?” Loki said, repeating the inquiry. “Let’s see, what year is it here?”

“2011, my alien time traveler.”

“I see.” He paused only a second to quickly process the math. “Then by Midgard’s reckoning I would be 1046, give or take a year.”

“Right, yeah,” Tony nodded along. “I had that one coming. But I was thinking more, you know, physically.”

“Oh,” Loki said, and his face gave the genuine impression that anything other than the numerical had not occurred to him. “Well, how old do I look by mortal standards?”

“I don’t know.”

“Guess.”

Tony put a finger to his lip and contemplated, really staring the other down. “Maybe,” he hummed, “twenty-eight, thirty.”

“That’s awfully young,” Loki said, and he considered the number that was such a small fraction of the one he had given. “But let us split the difference and, for argument’s sake, say I’m twenty-nine.”

“Sounds good,” Tony agreed.

“And how old are you?” Loki inquired.

Tony scoffed with offense. “Don’t you know better than to ask that sort of thing?”

“No,” he pleaded, “do indulge me. I have no standard for mortal ages. You would be giving me a most appreciated guide of reference.” Suddenly Tony felt like some studied creature, prodded for information to be used in education material later.

“Okay,” he relented, “I’m forty-one. Birthday was a week ago.”

“My late well wishes,” Loki said.

“Thanks, I guess.”

“And you are,” Loki contemplated, scrutinizing him, “middle-aged?”

“Thereabout,” he said. “Are you trying to make me feel old or something?”

“No, no,” Loki assured him. “If I were trying for that, I would simply tell you that where I am from, you’d be over two thousand.”

“That,” Tony exhaled, “yeah, that does it… Are you almost ready to go?” he asked, changing the subject.

“Almost,” Loki said. And he looked at his hair in the mirror once more before grabbing his shirt from the closet and slipping it on. He buttoned each button with delicate ease and fingers so long they looked like they had no business being anything other than clumsy. Then he popped his collar and did up his tie, a practice even Tony needed a mirror to do, more often than not. Tony grabbed the hanging jacket as Loki readjusted his collar. “Eager, are we?” he asked, slipping into the last piece of his expensive suit.

Tony circled him like a shark. “Good,” he said, taking in every angle and curve. “Very good. That’ll do.”

And as if sensing the need for some sort of reciprocity, Loki said of Tony, “I don’t know what’s more distracting, that tie or your beard.”

“You are such a charmer,” Tony swooned. “Tell me where are you from again? I need ten more of you to keep me humble.”

“As if anyone could,” Loki scoffed. He opened the door into the hall and waved Tony out. “Lead the way.”

—

Tony decided he liked being awarded a medal, a physical trophy of how amazing he was. He could have done without the Senator’s stabbing pin, however.

And as they stood together for the photo, Tony looked out at his adoring crowd and saw Loki standing off near its edge. Then he observed Pepper in the front row. And then, unfortunately, he saw Pepper curiously glancing where he had. She saw Loki. It was obvious from that special mix of disappointment and anger she held only for him and gave at full force in that moment.

Tony waited until the picture was taken and exactly one second longer out of formality. He sprinted through the crowd and away from Pepper, making his way through a large throng of people who wanted nothing more than to shake his hand.

He grabbed Loki by the arm and pulled him from the group. “Look, hey,” he said, “listen to me. If Pepper asks, you’re my new assistant.”

Loki looked at him oddly. “Who’s Pepper?”

“Hi, Pepper,” Tony greeted happily. He threw an amiable arm around Loki’s high shoulder and vainly pretended he had no reason to cower and no secret to hide, though he was wrapped around it.

“Tony,” she replied, flashing a smile that was incredibly fake. “Loki, was it?” she asked, turning her gaze on the other one.

“Yes,” he said.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Tony butted in, “but before you say anything, I had the guy vetted and he’s my new assistant now.”

“He’s your new assistant?” Pepper questioned with utter skepticism. Then she addressed Loki, “You’re his new assistant?”

“No,” said Loki.

“Yes,” insisted Tony.

“No.”

“Work with me,” he hissed, and they glared at each other until eventually Loki folded.

He could play along with a lie. “Hello, yes,” he said, greeting her once more. He smiled brightly and extended his hand for a firm, businesslike handshake. “I am indeed Tony’s new assistant.”

Pepper glanced back and forth between them. The effort they exerted was pathetic, laughable even. “What’s going on here?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Tony said, waving her justified paranoia away. “Nothing’s going on. I just lucked into the best personal assistant I’ve had since you left me.”

“You’ve had one assistant since me,” Pepper sighed.

“Yes, and if memory serves, she was a secret spy,” Tony said, “so I kind of have to question your hiring process.”

“You wanted her.”

“Right,” he agreed. “And now I want Loki.”

Pepper watched him through narrowed eyes of suspicion, trying to see through him. It wasn’t hard. “Can I talk to you– over there?”

“But I like it here,” Tony whined. “There are witnesses.”

“I wasn’t really asking,” she said, and she began walking away with the understanding he would follow.

Tony dropped his propped up arm. “Don’t go anywhere,” he ordered Loki. Then he trailed after Pepper like a child to the principal’s office.

“Tony.” She looked exasperated already, and the conversation had not even begun.

“Yes?”

“I know this would definitely be a new one in all the time I’ve known you,” she said, “but I have to ask.”

“Shoot,” he said, permitting whatever she had to throw at him so long as it wasn’t yelling.

She dropped her voice to a whisper, but it was not one of a subtle nature, more a stage whisper. “Are you sleeping with him?” she demanded.

“What?!” he exclaimed, thoroughly surprised. He had not seen that one coming.

“I’m sorry,” Pepper said, and she raised a quick hand in apology. “Sorry, I had to ask.”

“Why?” he questioned. Tony let his eyes drift away from the conversation. He looked for Loki, right where he had been left, and saw the man trying to get away from conversing with an older woman. Tony grinned to watch the torture. “You think I could land that plane?”

“I think anyone could if they really tried, and do you know why?” Pepper asked.

“Why?”

“Because he’s crazy, Tony,” she said in her ineffective whispering voice.

“What is that?” Tony said, cupping his ear as he leaned closer. “Is that jealousy I hear?”

“No,” Pepper replied without amusement, and it seemed she suddenly did not feel all that much regret for not aligning herself with the large child he was. “Now _please_  get rid of him, once and for all.”

“Hmm.” Tony popped his head up and looked around, surveying their surroundings as he thought. “You know,” he said, “it just might…” He nodded his head. “This would definitely be the spot.”

“For what?”

“To leave him,” he answered as though it were so obvious. Tony looked at her, confident in his plan. “It’s genius. There’s an entire country between us. How will he ever find me again?”

“Do not leave him in the crowed,” Pepper stated.

“Why not?”

“Because!” She glanced around then lowered her neck between her shoulders, looking sympathetic. “It feels like abandoning a puppy,” she murmured.

“It’s nothing like that,” Tony disagreed. “Puppies are much, _much_  cuter. And less resourceful. This guy could extort anything he wanted from anyone.” To that Tony had not one single doubt.

“No.” She looked positively resolute.

Tony heaved a sighing groan at Pepper ruining his brilliant plan. “You’re just afraid you won’t be able to run fast in those heels.”

“No,” Pepper said, “it’s cruel.”

“He’s cruel!” Tony exclaimed, gesturing in the general direction of the madman. “He tells me what to do and he won’t leave me alone.”

“Is that so?” she said.

“Yes,” he moaned, “it’s awful.”

She smirked at his expense. “Maybe he is your assistant then.”

“I wish,” he scoffed. “Then one of us would know how to run the house.” And then he remembered to ask his every so important question. “Pepper, who washes my clothes?”

“My god,” she said with a self-pitying chuckle, “you really are helpless without me.” Pepper pulled out her notepad and began writing instructions on a piece of paper. “Put the clothes down the laundry chute. The maid will do them on Thursday. Hang your suit up by the front door and I’ll have the dry-cleaners pick it up.”

“You’re writing it down,” Tony observed. “Why are you writing it down? I think I can remember what goes where and who does what until I actually get home.”

“Who does the laundry?” Pepper challenged.

Tony thought hard and then blew the effort out in a big exhale. “Loki.” Pepper smiled, but it lacked the joy to back it up; more it was smug and exhausted. She folded the paper and stuck it in his jacket pocket. “Fair enough,” Tony said.

“And fire your new assistant,” Pepper ordered once more. She began to walk away when Tony called her back with a question.

“Okay,” he said, “but answer me one thing, just one thing, before you go.”

“What is it?” she asked, hoping it would be important but knowing it wouldn’t.

He took a deep breath in preparation before asking, “Do you seriously think I could score with that?”

“Goodbye Tony.”

“I miss you already,” he called. And he blew her a kiss, but she had turned away and did not see.

Loki took great pleasure in detaching himself from his budding circle of admirers. Tony thought it was hilarious.

“Look at you, mister popular,” he mocked.

“Do not leave me like that again,” Loki warned, though what he could possibly back the threat up with was a mystery. “I thought I knew a woman’s desperation. Your world exhibits knew depths.”

“Not looking to settle down?” Tony asked with a teasing grin.

“No,” Loki bitterly replied. “And I would like to think I have a good thousand years before I must pay the subject mind again.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tony muttered. It was all fun and games until questions of mental health reared their head once more. It was as though Loki took delight in bringing up that he actually believed he was some immortal god.

Societal obligations required Tony to linger for at least a little while. He took more pictures and participated in more conversations than he wanted. Loki was at his side or near it the entire time. His satellite might not look good in the next morning’s paper, but the man said he would not leave for fear of sharks in the water. And indeed his fans did circle. Taking pity, Tony let them leave earlier than planned.

The ride back was mostly silent. Tony drove. Loki participated in very lazy sightseeing. Occasionally he would ask Tony if he knew the purpose or history behind an object they drove past, but it was only with the vaguest of interests. As he said, the world of Midgard and all its belongings were but a temporary fascination to him, his prison cell.

All too soon they seemed to win against traffic and make it back to the hotel. Tony parked in front and ignored the valet attendant who came so quick.

“Why are we sitting here?” Loki questioned, and he looked around as though expecting something was indeed supposed to happen.

Tony sighed. His eyes stared forward. His hands sat perfectly on the wheel, equally apart. “I think,” he said, “this is where we go our separate ways, partner.”

Loki laughed. “You must be joking.” Tony said nothing. His silence warped Loki’s features to vile outrage. “I won’t allow it,” he spat.

Leaning up out of the seat, Tony reached in his pocket and pulled his wallet. He tried to hand Loki his credit card, but the man would not cooperate. “Take it,” he insisted. When Loki still would not, Tony tossed it in his lap. “Do whatever you want. Book yourself an extended stay.”

“No.” Loki looked straight ahead with his nose high in the air, so wonderfully stubborn.

“Yes,” Tony argued. “Time to get out now.”

“No,” he repeated.

Tony groaned and hit at the steering wheel. “All right,” he said, opening his door. “Just keep the car.” He stepped out and slammed the door. Quickly though he leaned back in. “Well, it’s a rental,” he rambled, “so, you know, don’t ‘keep it’ keep it. But it’s yours for now.” He pulled back and shuffled between cars. Then he hopped up onto the sidewalk.

“Stop right now!” Looking back, he could see Loki struggling with the door handle before giving up and jumping out. “I don’t agree to this,” he shouted, chasing Tony down the street.

“Not really negotiating.”

“Have you forgotten our deal?” he demanded.

Tony spun around but did not halt. Instead he simply walked backwards. “Oh,” he said, “you mean the one where you don’t rat me out for…” He paused momentarily, drawing it out cynicism’s sake. “What was it again? Breaking your ribs?”

Loki growled through expression alone, making no sound. He bared his teeth in a sneer. “Did that woman put you up to this?” he questioned.

“She’s right,” Tony said. “It’s not…” He sighed. “There’s no reason why I should keep playing innkeeper.”

“Do you always do what people tell you?” Loki scoffed, mocking him.

“No!” Tony said. But he had become self-aware of his circumstances long ago. All his life a certain degree of obedience and duty had been expected. It was why he had grown to rebel so strongly against them. “No.” He shook his head, clearing it. “You’re trying to tell me what do right now,” he petulantly pointed out. “Shut up.” Stepping to the edge of the curb, Tony held his hand out to hail a cab driving by.

“Tony!”

His hand was on the cab door, but the shouting call pulled him back. Loki stood on the sidewalk, looking horribly lost. In that moment he really was the sad, crazy puppy Pepper had painted him as.

“Tony,” he said again, and his voice was desperate and pleading, “I have nowhere to go.”

“That’s what the card’s for,” Tony told him.

“I don’t know anything about this place,” Loki said. “Or this.” He threw Tony’s credit card to the ground. It made the most quiet of smacks.

Tony stared up to the sky and sighed. “Sorry,” he said, and he chuckled to realize his sincerity. “I actually am.” How odd.

“I thought you were curious,” Loki stated, “about me, about Asgard. Does the pursuit of knowledge not justify my worth?”

“You’re not… There’s no such thing as gods, all right?” Tony tried to reason.

“Hey, buddy!” shouted the cab driver. His window was rolled down and he had leaned through the door to steal Tony’s attention. “In or out?”

“One minute please!” Tony yelled back at him. “Can’t you see I’m trying to have a conversation with my friend here?”

“I’ll give you proof,” Loki declared, and he seemed determined to have the opportunity.

“What?” Tony asked, trying to follow two different conversations, but the cabbie was much less of a priority.

“Proof, yes,” Loki said. “Take me to the portal and I will show you everything is true.”

“Not doing scenic tours of the Bermuda Triangle today,” Tony replied. “Thanks, no thanks.”

“Then back to your home,” he insisted.

“No.”

“We can finish the experiment.” He was grasping at straws.

“No.”

“I’m not lying,” Loki shouted, and it was so frantic as to almost be a shriek. “For once… I’m not lying.” Melancholy became him. Tony watched his desperation, observed the buzzing mind that thought of any plot to play. But all he could come up with was the inadequate truth. “I’m not lying.”

“You got ten seconds to make up your mind,” the cab driver said, breaking the silence that had settled.

“What do you care if I choose– Oh, you’re talking about the cab,” Tony realized. He waved the man off, not caring what he did. “Whatever, start the meter.” He looked at Loki again but that pleading face had not wavered. If not for the urgency Loki pressed, Tony might have thought it was a manipulation. “Why?”

“Why am I telling the truth?” he questioned. “Because I need you, as much as that particular utterance does pain me to say.” And it did look painful for him, though more evident was his disgust. “I’m not cut out for this world alone, not powerless like I am.”

“No,” Tony clarified, “why should I?”

“You’re a curious intellectual, Tony. It’s,” he paused, looking for some unanswered reprieve from finishing his sentence, “admirable.”

“You like me?” Tony asked, and he was grinning as he said it.

“I certainly didn’t say that,” Loki argued. He looked embarrassed, though mostly annoyed as well. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You like me,” Tony mocked, and he rocked back and forth on his feet a little.

“No, you deaf imbecile,” Loki growled. “You’re little more than an insect to me.”

Tony leaned over, ignoring his protest, and spoke to the cabbie. “Guy’s probably off his rocker,” he confided, “but if he’s not, a god thinks I’m cool. That’s pretty neat, right?”

“Whatever you say, buddy.” And it was only a lifetime of working in a big city with its many eccentrics that could have given him such passivity.

“Tony,” Loki called, drawing back his attention. “What is your answer?”

He thought for a moment, and then Tony did open the door of the cab and climb in. Loki’s expression fell, his hopes faltered. Then Tony poked his head back out.

“Get in.” He patted the seat next to him. Loki did not need to be told twice and climbed inside. “Go straight, my good man,” Tony instructed. They drove for perhaps twenty feet before he spoke out again. “Right here, stop. That’s us.”

“That’s it?” the cab driver exclaimed, thoroughly irritated by then.

“What,” Tony asked, “you wanna go around the block a few times?”

“Get out,” the man said.

“How much do I owe you?” Tony cheerily asked.

“Three dollars,” he grumbled.

Tony pulled out his wallet and flipped through it before remembering. “Did you leave my card on the sidewalk?” he asked.

“Did you _see_  me pick it up?” Loki sarcastically replied.

“Driver,” Tony said, “you think you can like, back up?”

“Not in traffic,” he snapped.

“Around the block it is,” Tony declared. And around the block they went.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if there are typos. I’m just submitting this and jumping in bed. Hope you liked this chapter. I liked writing it. Their silly banter. 
> 
> There’s an interview out there of Tom Hiddleston talking about Thor. And his hair is still dyed black but laying more naturally. Which is obviously the look Tony imposed on Loki in this chapter. And maybe, just maybe, Loki decides he’ll leave it that way. Heh heh.


	9. Truth Will Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crap it's been over a month. I'm the worst. Sorry, sorry. I'm not gonna make anymore promises about an update schedule. I mean, this chapter was written entirely on my ipod during breaks at work. Heh heh. All I can say is I will do my best to be as quick as I can. Probably definitely gonna reevaluate number of chapters too. I knew I couldn't keep it to twelve. lol. To be fair though, this and the next chapter were supposed to be one. It would've been hella long though. So I broke them up.

The drive and flight back to Malibu were fairly quiet. Tony used the time resigning himself to the fact that his little stray would be staying with him for the foreseeable future. It was nice in some ways. Like his other favorite people and friends, Loki worked diligently to keep him humble and not shower him with praise. But the torturous sentence was also horrifying in other areas, especially if Pepper found him out again.

“So,” Loki said as the pilot announced they were over California once more, “I’ve no idea what you want from me. You complain of my presence and yet you refuse to take me to my portal. What a frustratingly complex creature you are.”

“You know,” Tony replied, “most people would be grateful to stay in a mansion with all expenses paid and every need met. Maybe _you’re_ the frustrating one. Seriously, I have no idea what you want. Everybody else is good just hanging out in the opulence.” He did not say that those particular freeloaders were all one-night-stands.

“If you think your world is opulent,” Loki chuckled, “then you truly have no idea to the glory of Asgard. How unfortunate a lowly mortal like you could never be allowed entry to see it.” He sipped his drink, a simple bottle of water for the daylight hour.

“You always know just what to say,” Tony muttered with a sarcastic roll of his eyes. “You wanna know what I think?”

“What?” Loki questioned with a grin.

“I think,” he said, “the big tough alien is homesick.” Even if the world he spoke of was nothing but make believe from a religion long dead, the reverence Loki showed towards it was obvious. In his head that place was his home, and he clearly missed it, even if his words said otherwise.

“Hardly,” Loki scoffed. “I have been away from home before, and far longer than this. But…” He watched the captured water in his hand, swirling it around and creating idle chaos, a whirlpool in a vacuum. “Well, as I’ve said before, there are very important matters I was in the middle of before being cast out. I have questions, Tony. Questions and no answers. Do you understand my frustration?”

“I’m a scientist,” Tony said, “a trial and error inventor. I kind of _live_ that frustration. There are always gonna be questions. You can’t answer them all.”

“Yes,” Loki sighed, “but this one has an answer. I know it does. It must.”

He began turning his bottle faster and faster, uneven rotations with no rhythm, only disorder. The swirling water reached the top and some spilled over. Slowly, calmly, Tony put his fingers over Loki’s, stilling his visible unease.

He looked at their hands, such a contrast. Fingers long and pale were covered by his own darker skin, rough from years of abuse. They were the same but in such different ways. One was dusk and warm colors, the other a gray dawn. Both were the sun but so differentially perceived.

Loki did not yell at him for touching. He did not even move his hand away. He simply let Tony stop him from looking like an erratic wreck.

“The experiment,” Tony said, and though it was a stab in the dark, he felt he guessed correct in bringing it up, “what might it show?”

“Nothing,” Loki insisted. “It is my fears, childish nightmares, a lifelong feeling of not belonging at its worst. It is... my imagination.”

“Yeah,” Tony sighed, “I totally believe that.” He sat back in his seat, taking his hand and its connection with him. Loki’s own hand followed for a brief second but then drew back when he remembered himself.

“Why should I tell you?” Loki asked. “Why, of all people, should you be the one I confide in with this fear?”

“Because,” Tony answered with charismatic nonchalance, “I don’t matter. Lowly mortal, remember? You might as well be talking to the wall.”

“Yes,” Loki smiled, “I suppose that is true.” When it came down to it, they were creatures of pride, the both of them, and for Loki it mattered most in elevating himself and lowering others. “But,” he hesitated, “I can’t tell you. I can’t tell anyone.”

“Great,” Tony said, “keep it in. That’s healthy. Working fantastically so far, just a bang up job.” He pointed to Loki’s foot as it tapped fitfully on the airplane floor.

Loki stopped the motion and cleared his throat as a diversion. “It’s not true,” he said. “I’ve no proof and it would only serve to upset us both, not that you could fully comprehend the implication. You are so misinformed to the ways of the universe.”

“Yeah, and you’re a coward.” Had he searched and contemplated for hours, Tony could not have come up with a more insulting thing to say. It must have surely been because of Loki’s insistence that he came from a warrior society. The glare of a ‘coward’ was a horrible thing to be on the other end of. It was strong and vile enough that Tony felt his very life at stake. “What I mean,” he attempted to clarify, “is... you won’t even get proof. You’re so afraid it’ll be right.”

“You speak of things you cannot begin to understand,” Loki hissed, “feuds and prejudices, curses above all else. I am cursed. Don’t you get it?”

“No,” Tony answered simply. “Because I don’t do the magic thing. I don’t get it.” He pointed at himself saying, “Scientist. You want a scientific answer, that I’ll give you.”

“Very well.” Loki sat back in his seat. His water bottle rested on his thigh and he caressed its plastic opening. He was an intimidating villain, cold and calculating. “The scientist offers science, the new age magic of an archaic society. I accept.”

“Uh,” Tony drawled, “accept what?”

“Your offer to continue our experiment, of course,” Loki said. “You promise proof. I shall take it. See,” he grinned with all the love of a snarling cat, “no coward here.”

“Creepy,” Tony commented, ill at ease with the horrible switch Loki seemed to have flicked. “But it’s a deal. I have to admit I am just incredibly overcome with curiosity. So I guess I’ll find out one way or another.”

“Yes,” Loki agreed, “when we find it isn’t true I will have no reason to keep it secret any longer. So yes, assist me and we shall know. And,” he said, “perhaps then you will take me home.”

“You know, ET’s people came and picked him up,” Tony said with a huff.

“Well, I’m assuming he wasn’t banished by the king.”

—

Tony threw his suitcase on the bed and flopped back to join it. He lay sprawled out, staring at the ceiling.

“What are you doing?” came the irritated call from the door. “It isn’t time to sleep. Get up, begin the experiment anew, and answer my hanging question.”

“Shh,” Tony whispered, placing a finger to his lips. “After-trip ritual. I am far too great to be incapacitated by jet lag, but... I do like to take just a few minutes. Become one with the house again.” He took in a deep breath and threw his arms up above his head and onto the blanket, stretching himself.

“And that helps?’ Loki asked, and he sounded closer, as though intrigue pulled him like a rope. “I am... tired.”

“Jet lag.”

“Yes, all right, but I don’t usually become so lethargic, not this easily.” He sounded offended by his weakened state. “I haven’t even done anything.”

“Jet lag.”

“Damn this mortal body.”

Tony patted the mattress beside himself and gave it a little rub. “Come, Spock. Lay with me.”

Loki first sat on the edge of the bed. He was light and so graceful that it was barely felt. Then he laid back with his knees bent over the side, same as Tony. “How does merely lying here help?” he asked. “We would need sleep, a few decent hours of it at least.”

Tony shushed him again. “No thinking,” he said. “For, like, five minutes just turn it off. Make that pretty head as empty as a trophy wife’s.”

He complied. Loki lay beside him as a silent dip in the sheets. There was only the sound of their breath, slightly heavy from exhaustion. They indulged in the swelling calm of inhales.

If Loki counted the seconds, it would not have been surprising. What felt like exactly five minutes later, he said, “I don’t know what it is I’m waiting for but it isn’t coming. I am almost as tired now as before.”

“Yeah,” Tony sighed, “this doesn’t actually do much. It just gives me enough strength to put coffee on.” He stood in one quick motion, springing onto one foot with the second close behind. “Want a cup?”

The coffee pots in his house outnumbered sentient life, both human and manufactured. His favorite, however, was in the workshop. There was nothing very different about it, but drinking in the hall of inventions was always inspiring.

Loki sat on the couch. Tony stood beside the brewing pot, willing it to go faster.

“How you take it?” he asked as the last few drops rippled.

“Honestly I’ve no idea,” Loki admitted. “You are the more learned individual here. Surprise me.” He grinned, but Tony was certain that if the man had never tried coffee, its bitterness would not be pleasant.

He handed Loki a cup: sweet cream and ample sugar for a sweet tooth. The first sip came and Tony waited for the recoil of distaste with blame turned on him.

“Oh,” Loki cooed instead, and he seemed pleased. “This drink, I like it.” He gulped down the entire mug in several huge swallows, unmindful of the heat. Tony watched over the rim of his own cup. And when Loki did finish, far quicker than Tony, he held his coffee cup high. Then he threw it down, down onto the concrete floor where it shattered. “Another.”

“What... the hell!” Tony shouted. Really though, by that point it was his own fault to be surprised by what Loki did anymore.

“If you would be so kind,” Loki added, and it seemed a question as he said it, as though he was not sure what else must be conveyed in his request.

“You are aware how little sense it makes to ask for more then smash the cup, right? Hey, genius, what am I supposed to put it in?” Tony whistled and Dum-E began rolling over. “Just, uh,” he told the robot, “just sweep this up, yeah?”

“It was delicious,” Loki explained, “so I asked for another.”

“Great,” Tony smiled with such sarcasm, “but maybe next time use your words like a big boy.” He stood and walked back to the coffee pot. “You know, to save on glassware.” Tony made him another cup, fixed the same as before, and held it out. Loki grabbed but Tony pulled it away. “If this one lands on the floor, the next one’s getting glued to your hand.” Loki rolled his eyes and took the mug. “Not kidding. I’ve got the strong adhesives, metal to metal kind.”

Tony sat in the chair and watched as Loki drank down his second cup, slower that time, enjoying it. “The first truly good thing Midgard has offered.”

“I’m offended,” Tony gasped with false insult.

Loki took another sip, then he looked at Tony with an appraising eye. “Very well,” he said after a moment. “Perhaps it is the second.” It was the best compliment Tony could ever hope to receive.

It might have been hilarious watching Loki buzz through his caffeine rush, but that was only if he had not utilized the extra energy to annoy.

“What is this exactly?” As soon as Tony’s back was turned, Loki began tapping on the glowing display of his keyboard projection. He examined it with narrowed eyes and scrutiny. “Midgardian letters arranged in a random sequence on one. Some characters I’ve never seen on another. Is it a code?”

“Get off,” Tony said. “Go on shoo.” He knocked Loki’s hands away. “Keyboard,” he explained. “Tap the letter, comes up on the screen.”

“Disgustingly archaic,” Loki grimaced.

“I don’t really need it,” Tony defended. The invention of Jarvis had made the keyboard fairly obsolete years ago. He could dictate everything, if he so chose. “Habit. But you see here,” he pointed out the foreign keys Loki had been confused by, “that’s all me. Shortcuts, formulas, makes programming easier.”

Loki smiled a smile devoid of mischievous condescension. He looked impressed, amused. “Like a spell,” he said.

Tony scoffed. “No, no way. It’s not a...” He stopped to think it over. The ascertain was not completely incorrect. “Yeah,” he decided, “sure. Like a spell of my own invention.”

“And you created new runes for it.” His hand dropped back down to the keyboard, but Tony swiped the display away, clearing its glowing presence from the desktop.

“Yeah, any one of those can do a thousand bad things in inexperienced hands. Best leave it to the professional.”

Loki was irritably offended at the idea that he was lesser in any way. He let the subject drop. “And this?” he asked as he went through Tony’s handwritten notes. “For our experiment?” Loki read quickly, tossing the finished pages over his shoulder as he paced in a erratic circle.

Tony caught the fluttering papers and snatched the stack from Loki’s hands. “Mine.” He tossed them on the desk. “And sure, it’s kind of ‘our experiment’, but you’re not the lab partner, buddy. You’re my fuzzy guinea pig.”

Loki’s lip spread into a sneer. His nose scrunched at the insulting thought. “And here I thought there was no plateau further down than human.”

“You want a promotion?” Tony looked him up and down with a half grin and somewhat lecherous eye. “Sexy assistant, maybe? Secretary? I wouldn’t say no to another cup of coffee.”

Loki smiled and leaned in close. His cheek was so near. If either of them wavered the slightest amount they would touch. He whispered in Tony’s ear, “I am no one’s servant. Get it yourself.” Then he stepped back, removing himself from the static atmosphere of close proximity. To make his point thoroughly established, he made himself another cup of coffee, finishing off the pot and staring at Tony the entire time he did it.

“You are a smoking hot mess when you’re being a bitch.” Loki took it as a compliment. He raised his mug to Tony and drank with a grin as he paced around in the quick circles of a caffeine victim.

Loki mostly left him to his work after that. In the background of Tony’s attention, he was very jittery in all he studied and touched, though he hid it well behind grace. He spoke of many things with hasty words that rarely paused. It sounded like myth and fiction to Tony, so most of it he did not lend comprehension to. He did however like to hear Loki speak it, smooth words in his posh voice with sentences that sounded as formal as any rehearsed production. For that reason Tony did not play his customary music. Loki was soundtrack enough.

When he needed the liquid gift of energy once more, Tony made another pot of coffee. He offered Loki a cup but the man turned him down saying it made him act far too strange, most noticeably in the fact that he could not _shut up_. “Suit yourself,” Tony said.

Slowly, Loki wound down. Jet lag, caffeine crash, basic exhaustion, it bit at him, then devoured him. He sat when standing became too much, yawned when he could stop it no more. Several of them caught on, making Tony yawn as well, but he was familiar with the signal for sleep and adept at shooing it away.

From the corner of his eye, Tony watched Loki. That dark head bobbed. His green eyes drooped. He yawned far too much and too loud to prelude anything other than inevitable sleep.

When Tony looked again he was gone, out like a persistent and stubborn light. “Poor little guy,” he murmured. “Or ‘god’ rather. Just couldn’t handle all the excitement.”

He put down what he was working on to find Loki a blanket. It could get somewhat chilly in the large room after all.

Loki looked his most calm in sleep. The sight of it was reminiscent of the night they first met, though that slumber had been a little less voluntary. Tony preferred to see him like this. He was so young, so smart and intriguing. It was unfair that consciousness brought to him thought and worry. He deserved to always have the peaceful expression he now wore, when his features released their stress and lay smooth, content. Tony wanted to teach him to relax all the time, for the man’s own sake. Though removing the stick keeping him all prim and deriding would not necessarily hurt Tony’s feelings either.

Tony draped a soft blanket over his bent up form. He really was too large for the couch.

One minute more, that was all he spent looking. A peacefully sleeping Loki truly was too great a thing to pass up, though Tony himself was not normally one to stop and sight see. Then he had Jarvis dim the lights and got back to work. Unlike Loki, he knew that the trick was to never actually stop the caffeine intake. Let it flow like an IV.

—

When Loki woke, the morning was in its infancy. The sun was not yet so bright as to blind, but it was a definite annoyance as it came streaming through the high windows of Tony’s workshop and right onto his face. Beams of it lay across his cheek and on his eyes, shining through the lids to make him see gold and red.

He sat up with a loud groan. Scarcely could he recall falling asleep. If he had been in his right mind at the time, he was certain he would have chosen another location to let it happen. He was sore, so very, very sore. However of all parts of him that hurt— and if he took stock, it would be the majority— none were so bad as his chest. He put a hand to his bruised skin with its tender muscle and moaned his pain again.

“Morning starshine.”

Loki looked over and saw that Tony was still diligently at work, though the effort weighed him down. His shoulders slumped and his eyes looked red, tired. It did not carry on into his demeanor, however, and perhaps that had much to do with the cup of coffee he was drinking.

“I’m in pain,” Loki told him as he ambled over to the man at his desk. “With your cruel injury at the head of it.”

“I actually got your prescription filled,” Tony said. “Pain pills, upstairs. They’re in a bag or something. I don’t know. Look around.”

“Perhaps in a moment,” Loki said. He was not awake enough for stairs.

In a glance Loki saw that the space was much more strewn than he had seen it the previous night. There were four large boxes on the floor with contents spilling out of them and onto tables. The instruments Tony used looked somewhat odd to him, recognizable in all but their shape. Cone shaped glass and rounded sat beside hanging tubes and twirling pipes.

“What are you making?” Loki asked him. It looked like his own workstation on a bad, disorganized day, but Tony was no potions master.

“Really?” Tony stated, looking up from his computer. “Only the same thing I’ve been working on for the last fifteen hours: your chilly experiment.”

“Oh,” Loki muttered, “I had no idea it would involve mixing, nor was I aware you knew how.”

Tony shrugged. “Chemistry, not really my strong suit,” he said. “But, back against the wall, I can still blend with the best.”

“You are so full of surprises,” Loki hummed, and truly he was. There seemed to be a new one at every turn, keeping boredom and predictability at bay. As far as mortals from Midgard went, there had to be worse choices for flippant fate to stick him with. Loki leaned against the desk to look at Tony, his amusing benefactor. Movement, however, hurt muscles and bone he did not know could feel such dull ache. More familiar was he with the acute attack of battle injuries. “You should have woken me when you went to bed.”

“Not your mother,” Tony said. “Didn’t go to bed.”

Loki frowned. He placed the tips of his long fingers beneath Tony’s chin and forced him to look up. Those red eyes he had seen before looked worse from so close. The bags underneath did no favors. “I never said you had to work through the night.”

“Yeah, wouldn’t have if I didn’t want to. I’m not really a ‘how high?’ when you say ‘jump’ kind of guy.” He pushed Loki’s hand away and looked back at his computer.

“But isn’t that,” he could think of no better word than, “ _bad_ for mortals? You need the rest, don’t you? I know I have been feeling horrible without it, weak.”

“Aww,” Tony smirked, “you do care.”

“Shut up,” Loki hissed, and he folded his arms stoically. He absolutely did not care for the physical wellbeing of a frail human, not even one of the better ones. “I need you at your best mentally. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m putting this mortal body of mine at the mercy of your experimentation. I will not have you guessing through exhaustion as you finish.”

“Oh, that?” Tony said. “Yeah, it’s done. I’m checking my email.” He tapped a few keys and the display changed to flashing images of cars instead. “Who’s ready to be my frozen guinea pig?” He spun his chair and stood up. With Loki leaning as he was, they were more or less eye to eye, all the better for glaring at him.

“You couldn’t have started with that,” Loki stated, “preferably after your morning greeting?”

“Hey, I was done over an hour ago, master. You’re the one we had to wait on.”

“Yes, yes,” Loki dismissed with a wave of his hand. “I was asleep, yes. However, you could have woke me up.”

“Didn’t want to,” Tony said. He grinned but it looked less sly than all his others, more fond. “I like watching you sleep.”

It was a bizarre statement to be sure. A normal person would have been ill at ease to hear it. And yet, simply from the way Tony had spoken, Loki could not be upset, but neither could he bring himself to comprehend.

“Why?”

“When you sleep your fangs recede,” Tony answered, and Loki could take him seriously no more.

“Just prepare everything,” he ordered.

Tony chuckled. “Someone’s excited to expose themselves to a mad science experiment and a hypothesis so vague I’m not even sure what we’re gunning for or if it’ll work.”

“It will,” Loki told him, “or it will not. And in this very unique case, failure is success.” He did not comment on Tony’s quip that he could possibly excited for it. There was no such emotion in him. Dread perhaps, fear and anxiety, but not excitement.

“So,” Tony stated with a deep exhale, “obviously there’s gonna be some risks, possible fatal ones. I’d feel a lot better if you signed some handy little piece of paper exonerating me from prosecution. But my lawyer— uh, my assistant— she ended up being part of a crazy government organization big on acronyms. I guess they pay better.“

“You won’t kill me.” And he smirked with such arrogance. Tony could give him every conceivable violence he had for years and never manage lasting damage. But then of course, that was a reality in which he still held godly power. Still, he was not worried. Mortals often fretted unnecessarily.

“And yet, if it’s not too much trouble,” Tony said, “I’m gonna go ahead and get you to smile at the camera right there,” he pointed to the small device on his desk and with its glaring lens, “and give the okay.”

Loki cleared his throat, looking at the camera as directed and giving his very put upon consent. “I am Loki of Asgard and I—”

“Cut,” Tony interrupted. “Let’s roll again. Maybe this time leave out anything that might make people think your permission’s invalid on the grounds of... overwhelming insanity.”

“Oh,” Loki grinned, “I’d hardly call it overwhelming. I manage just fine.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “From the top.”

“I am Loki. I give my complete consent to this man, Tony…”

“Stark,” he supplied.

“Tony Stark. Should the worst or its lesser forms occur, I absolve him of any punishment. He acts on my behalf and insistence.” Loki waited a moment, then exhaled. “Sufficient?”

Tony pushed a button on the camera and sat it aside. “Should do,” he said. “Of course you speak so proper it sounded rehearsed, but it’s not like this is the most legally binding thing anyway. Peace of mind, that’s all. Now,” he held out an arm and gestured for Loki to follow, “to the scene of the crime.”

Tony led him to an odd seat, some sort of amalgamation of bed and chair, given the way it leaned back. Loki sat and swung his legs over, then he slowly leaned back, conforming to the shape of the chair. “Well,” he commented snidely, “it’s more comfortable than the sofa.”

“Great,” Tony replied, “sleep here. I’ll rent out your room.”

“It still does not rival an actual bed,” Loki said, not believing for a moment that the man would invite more house guests. Tony would have done away with Loki himself if he had allowed it. No, Tony liked solitude, a trait they shared. But being alone together, with its pleasant silences and matched wit, well that was not entirely horrible either.

“Right so,” Tony said, seeming to think out loud, “probably should go ahead and take your shirt off.” Loki raised an eyebrow at him. “Oh, _now_ you’re being little miss modesty, like it’s something I haven’t seen before?” He held up a handful of wires with odd little discs at their ends. “To monitor your heart.”

“How positively primitive,” Loki replied, but he did obey and began unbuttoning his shirt. He handed it to Tony, who threw it uncaringly over his shoulder. It landed on a chair, but Loki credited that to luck more than anything.

Tony’s eyes went directly to his bare chest and the bruise upon it, large and an ugly yellow at the edges. He poked it like a child. “Does that hurt?”

“Yes, it hurts!” Loki snapped. “And I don’t think you ever actually apologized.”

“Sorry I poked your bruise.”

“For _giving_ it to me.”

“Uh,” Tony drawled, “if I recall that was your fault with your wacky desert weather experiment.”

“And yet it is shaped like the helmet of your armor,” Loki retorted. But he gave up on getting the apology, not that he really cared for any reason past seeing Tony’s contrition. “Go on. Monitor me, if you must.”

Loki reclined and the man began attaching the wires to his body, pressing them against his skin until they stayed. Tony put one on his forehead for the purpose of tracking body temperature. Loki felt ridiculous. Surely it was all some prank meant to ridicule him. The laughter never came.

“Okay,” Tony said, and once more he seemed to be thinking out loud, voicing his thoughts as a method of checking them for errors. “If all goes well, we should get you right to freezing without going too far under.” He picked up a tray from a nearby table. It held needles and vials. Their contents were a lovely blue, but Loki could not admire the color for all that it reminded him of his worries.

“And what will your potion do to me that will make that happen?” he asked. Tony may have surprised him with the skill, but Loki knew too many who shared it. He trusted perhaps a handful.

“My ‘potion’,” Tony said, “is gonna slow your heart rate down. And I mean way down. Eventually my machines won’t even register it.”

“This is safe?”

“I’m giving you safest,” he answered, “not necessarily safe. Less blood pumping through will start bringing your temperature down. Then we start with the external, doing cold therapy stuff.”

Loki nodded his head as consent. Patience he held, but it was a fickle and particular virtue as well. This, he thought, could not wait. His choices for answers were too limited. His father would know. But banishment, though almost unprecedented, most likely held a longer sentence than a week.

“Now,” Tony said, “in the interest of full disclosure, I have, like... several doctorates, but I’m not actually a doctor. I did study some courses in the interest of gross icky biological warfare. But I’m not getting into that right now, or... ever. You still good?”

“Please,” Loki said, “just stop talking.”

“Nervous?” he asked.

“Of course not.” Loki was terrified, but not for the reasons Tony thought, not for worry of his mortal form. What if the experiment did reveal something? What if he _was_ cursed horribly, or what if he _was_ a... He could not even think it.

Tony held a vial. He squeezed the handle at the base and drops of that blue liquid dripped down the needle at its head. “Ready?”

“Yes.”

A flexible strap was wrapped around his arm, so tight he almost said something. Tony tied it off. Then he wiped the crook of his arm with a small square, cold and wet. He stuck the needle straight into a vein. The pain was nothing, though the puncture was large. Tony drove the liquid into him with a slow push. If Loki expected some glowing reaction of magic, he did not see it transpire.

“Is that it?” he asked.

“Yep.” Tony removed the needle and pressed a piece of cotton to his arm. “Hold that.” Loki did so with his free hand as the man ripped off a section of tape to keep it in place. “So that’s done. Stay here,” he said, “chill. I’ll be right back.”

He did not leave for long, a minute perhaps, but Loki already felt the heavy burden of the medicine upon him when Tony returned. Suddenly any energy given by a night of sleep was gone. He felt exhausted, unnaturally so.

“I don’t like this,” he told Tony. “Why is it necessary?”

“Heart equals blood equals heat,” he said. “Don’t over think it or that brain of yours will cause so much friction you warm back up.” He draped a blanket over Loki. It was stiff and uncomfortable but most of all it was cold, like ice. He shivered to have it on him, touching bare skin.

“And now?” Loki questioned, wondering what else would be forced on him for one simple outcome.

“Now we wait,” Tony said. He hooked his foot around a stool and dragged it closer before sitting on it.

They did not talk as time passed by. Loki found himself too anxious to think of conversation and too weary to carry it out. Tony was respectfully silent beside him, tinkering with one of his devices. Every few minutes, like clockwork, he would check Loki’s every vital signs for changes, noting his progress out loud.

“How you feeling?” he asked after one such instance.

“Cold,” Loki dourly remarked, “lethargic.”

“Well you’re under room temperature now,” Tony said, and he seemed so surprised, shocked that it was working but more curious still of something else. “I seriously have no idea how you’re doing this,” he admitted. “Really you shouldn’t even be awake right now.”

“What?” Loki demanded, breathing quicker through his alarm. “You never said this would make me sleep.”

“Sorry,” he said, and he did look apologetic. “See? Not a doctor. These things I do, I forget what’s implied and what’s not. But it’s nothing to worry about. You’ll go to sleep, that’s all. Like a little baby coma. I’ll make sure you wake up.”

Loki shook his head but the effort took all he had. “No.” His breath was labored from fear and exhaustion. “No, that’s not acceptable. If something should happen… I would not trust you alone to see it.”

“I’ve seen you sleep before, just last night as a matter of—”

“This is different, you imbecile!” Tony was surprised from his outburst and it was a warranted reaction. But Loki would not apologize. “Don’t let me fall asleep,” he said, and never would he admit that it sounded anything like a plea.

“Okay.” Tony ran a hand through his short hair. It was already such a mess and there was no doubt he had repeated the action over and over through the night. “What then? Do you want to stop? I can get you some adrenaline. That’ll have you bouncing back. Better than a pot of coffee, that’s for sure.”

“No.” Loki shook his head. “No, I will carry on. I never quit. Just,” he sighed, “talk to me, I suppose. Perhaps whatever droll anecdotes you blather on about will keep me aware.”

Tony paused for a moment, as though unsure of what to say. In the end he began an innocuous narrative of his life, starting at the first interesting part. “When I was four I built my first circuit board,” he said. “I can’t… I don’t even think I can remember what it did. But I was, you know, four so it was probably like a more challenging version of Pong or something.”

Loki chuckled. Humor seemed heightened in his current state. He felt drunk. “I have no idea what you just said.”

“Hey, as long as you heard it. Stay with me, Sleeping Beauty. I don’t want you to kick my ass otherwise.”

Tony spoke and Loki listened. Occasionally he would comment, but as time dragged on and the frigid blankets were replaced, his speech grew more dispersed and rare.

Then the most annoying sound rang out, high in pitch and unending in its torturous scream. “What is happening?” Loki asked, but he was almost past caring.

“Yeah,” Tony stood in a rush and looked his machines over, “you’re flat lining. I can’t pick your heart rate up anymore. It’s too low.” He flicked a switch and the noise stopped, disabled. “Congratulations, you’re dead.” He looked back and forth between the monitors and Loki several times. “Seriously how are you still awake?”

Loki grinned but said nothing more. Repeating himself over and again on his origins was too much hard work.

“I’m gonna,” Tony sighed, “get the defibrillator. Just in case. Don’t panic. Just a worst case scenario kind of thing.”

Loki had no idea what a defibrillator was, nor did he care, but he did not like that Tony was leaving to get one. That left him alone with his drooping eyelids and heavy limbs and all the weary thoughts concerning them. He was so tired, so sleepy, and cold. It felt as though his entire body had stopped. Blood pooled inside and stagnated. He had experienced a tourniquet before, wrapped around his leg to stop gushing blood. What he felt in that moment was the hostile takeover of that sensation throughout. He hated it. He hated the weakness it gave him. Surely he would be sick, and that was if he lived, a sentiment he was beginning to doubt. Never had he felt so weak, so like death itself. Maybe Tony was wrong. Maybe he should worry.

“To—” he tried to call. His voice was treasonously absent. The idiot had blundered some step in his process. Something was wrong. He was going to die trapped in the pathetic body of a mortal, killed by one as well, and on accident no less. What a humiliating end, to die in such a way, at the mercy of sleep and cold ache.

But then, as Loki thought on all the universe’s gifts he would miss and those others that would make him glad to be rid of living, it stopped.

Everything receded. The sensation began in his chest and Loki noticed it like a fire in the coldest of winters. Despite the icy blankets and poison in his veins, he felt warmth. He would never take it for granted again.

As it spread he felt amazing. He felt strong. His morning soreness lifted, ebbed away with quickened healing as he was accustomed to their doing. Loki was experiencing a sampled taste of divinity once more.

His eyes began to hurt. No, it was the light which hurt them, an external force. They all seemed so much brighter than they had been before, or he was more sensitive. Loki closed his eyes and it helped.

Perhaps Tony had killed him, wrecked his human body past repair. They had broken the Allfather’s thieving decree and restored him to his true self through death. Loki was pleased with himself and his cunning, even if it were accidental. He opened his eyes to look once more upon his Asgardian body, so similar and yet not.

“No.”

His skin was not as he knew it. “No.” His eyes hurt in the light, but they pained him more to look. “No, no, no, no, no.”

He screamed.

“No!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh no! What happened?! .......Like we don’t already know. Heh.
> 
> Tony just sort of gives up pretending he’s not attracted to Loki in this chapter. lol. Maybe if he’s overt enough something will happen.
> 
> Anyway yeah. No promises for next update but I DO PROMISE I will finish. It just may take me a little while.


End file.
